


𝙳𝙴𝙻𝙾𝙲𝙰𝙿𝙾𝙽𝚄𝙼

by shiterature



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Background Het, Bittersweet Ending, Canon Compliant, Fluff and Angst, Gay Remus Lupin, I joined this fandom way too late, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Mystery, Oh the tags were fucked up, Past Child Abuse, Post-Voldemort's Halloween 1981 Attack on the Potter Family (Harry Potter), Post-War, Self-Acceptance, Self-Discovery, Severus Snape Has a Heart, Severus Snape-centric, Slow Burn, Slurs, Some Humor, Swearing, This Is STUPID, Vomiting, Young Severus Snape, although around act three it gets pretty full swing, banter heavy, because if they do then I’m blaming my early publishing on that, bon appétit, do those typically mess with your judgment, enjoy this shit, except for that one bitch, i don’t know, i guess, i started writing this without pairings in mind so let me assure you that things actually happen, i think I have a sinus infection, ignore it though, it isnt as terrible as the warnings make it seem, it’s funny because everybody hates this ship, no character shaming. all characters are displayed as human, self-destructive thoughts, slight PTSD, some content warnings, some descriptions because those will probably help, some violence, theres an actual plot, this makes it sound really dark, what even is it, who i made up. literally an oc dont worry your faves wont be thrown under the bus
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-03
Updated: 2021-02-16
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:02:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 87,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26787919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shiterature/pseuds/shiterature
Summary: 𝐝𝐞•𝐥𝐨•𝐜𝐚•𝐩𝐨•𝐧𝐮𝐦: 𝘓𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘯 - 𝚝𝚘 𝚞𝚗𝚍𝚘 𝚖𝚒𝚜𝚙𝚕𝚊𝚌𝚎𝚖𝚎𝚗𝚝 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚝𝚊𝚔𝚎 𝚑𝚘𝚕𝚍.»»»»“Why is it connecting us?” asks Remus, his voice safe and demure in Snape’s ear, his gold eyes bright with adventurous urgency.“It can be difficult to discern,” replies Severus as he relays the same breed of oddity back to him — although copiously subdued — “but it’s doing an irritatingly thorough job of carrying through.”»»»»𝐈𝐭'𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐲𝐞𝐚𝐫 𝟏𝟗𝟖𝟏. A new acquaintance to the territory of teaching, an old friend to grief and misfortune, and entirely off on the wrong foot, twenty-one-year-old Professor Severus Snape reverts to an old charm of his - a charm for things that are lost - in attempt to find the one book in which he wrote it.Stories of one misunderstood by the masses; a report of one disliked by all but few.The tale of a forgotten spy.
Relationships: Remus Lupin/Severus Snape
Comments: 81
Kudos: 30





	1. {𝐜𝚘𝚖𝚙𝚘𝚗𝚎𝚗𝚝 𝐨𝚗𝚎   »   𝐥𝚎𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝐫𝚒𝚟𝚎𝚛 𝐰𝚊𝚝𝚎r}

< 0 DAYS >

Close your eyes and answer me this:

How much do you know about the concept of a human being? 

To what degree are you familiar with the bases on which we all, as animals, function, percolating through life alongside our genetic mutuals, following the long path through inhale to exhale, esse to cessation? How well are you acquainted with the sound of laughter, or the taste of tears? How often do you feel affliction in the nerves of your tearable skin; soundness in the deepest center point in your head just before falling asleep?

Do you know love? Do you know anger?

Do you know fear?

Fear, in particular, is a powerful phenomenon. Fear makes a majority of our decisions. It hits us in ways that things such as anger cannot; twists us further than love ever could. Adrenaline, in only most cases, is a very intramural ordeal. It's often described as something intangible; something you only know exists if you've had it pulsing through the veins of your own consciousness.

Fear, if relevantly presented, is the sound of flustered footsteps. The feeling of a heartbeat drumming madly on one's own throat, the beatific pelting of Celtic drums. It's the smell of cold air; the taste of lightning. The awareness of devastation. The sensation of agony. The sight of a long hallway — one you recall too well. A corner that you remember being thrown against. Weeping at. Bleeding on. A lock you know exactly how to pick without making any noise other than one single, inaudible—

Click.

A door swings open, belaboring the wall and damaging its own hinges with the force of a surging waterfall, while, just as stealthily, the water stampedes through it. And he himself — the water — has something momentous to effectuate. He's on a mission, in complete despair, just like the waves upon fusillading waves that he embodies. Downcast is what he's become. Forlorn is what all his muscles succumb to turning as he retches in as much air as he can muster, his eyes dripping with the sickly gleam of fresh anguish. But, throughout all this, he's still quick. He can still dodge further misfortune. He knows this. He's sure of it.

He scrambles through the dark room, choking on his own sobs as he rummages for a very specific bottle. His mother must have packed it off somewhere before she left the home and likely died. He’d like to think that she’s dead, at least. But in the ruins that this home has become since it became abandoned and never sold, in regards to both her and what he’s looking for, it’s hard to completely tell.

It's the thirty-first of October. Over here in the world without all the histrionics and witchcraft and gore, children are in the streets, all dressed up in gruesome costumes and, in many cases, dressed up like him. He marvels at their innocence. They're lucky it's only a costume, and they should be substantially indebted of it today.

He throws open a closet door, violently scuffling things aside as he tears through the shelves. He thinks he's going to hyperventilate. Either that or die of suffocation; at this point neither is completely certain to become reality. His hand brushes against a cardboard box, resulting in a familiar clinking sound of clean, smooth glass against itself. He yanks it down, setting it on the floor and searching desperately through it.

His fingers land on a thin blue bottle. Rectangular and tapering in shape, he recognizes it immediately as the one he needs; the one he's been missing for all this time. The one he hasn't had to look for until just now.

Tucking it into his robes, he disappears.

His feet land somewhere on the grass of the bleak world he knows much better than home. He sprauchles briefly — his oxygen levels are messing with his balance — and, upon regaining his unsure footing, begins to run.

His pointed shoes gouge the earth as he absconds through his surroundings, passing trees and homes without so much as a fleeting glance. He doesn't have to check for danger anymore; the menace himself will be gone for years to come. The only threat left is the one he's trying to avoid: permanent and debilitating loss.

The problem with this is that the point of loss has already happened. It's already hit him and it's impossible to go back and reverse. But there's still this small impending shred of hope pulsing at the back of his head that perhaps he can bring someone back, even if only he can see it. With the compound he's planned, he finds comfort in knowing that it'll either do exactly that or make him forget he wanted to do it at all. And either, he's sure, will suffice.

He begins to recognize the field he's in. He's good friends with the footholds and trails here, his feet remembering exactly where to plant themselves and exactly what to avoid. He sees the towering building up on the hill to the left. He knows he's in the right spot.

Running further, he reaches a small hut. He knows for certain it's empty; its inhabitant has just left to go fetch a small child from the place he's just been. He rattles the doorknob to find it predictably locked. Still overtaken by sobs, he yanks open the side window, hearing a pernicious fracture in the old oak as he does, and crawls inside.

He knows there are containers in here. Containers that'll work well enough for what they'll have to hold.

He grabs a vial from one of the shelves, reaching into his pocket and drawing out the bottle from his mother. His hands shake unforgivingly, his breath quivering as he prepares to right his own wrongs. To recondition history.

Pulling a bare note and a pen from his robes, he scrawls fleeting words and reads them over, gasping for air as he opens the small bottle.

Lethe River Water, he's written, for memory.

Dropping some of the substance from the bottle into the small glass vial, he puts the note back into his pocket, absentmindedly forgetting the pen.

He has to let this sit for a while. A few weeks at most.

Setting the vial back in the far corner of the cupboard where it will never be espied, he adds one small ingredient from a tiny jar he's been carrying on a chain round his neck since he visited the godforsaken home of the little boy. He painstakingly eases it out with the tip of his pen, dropping it gently into the water: a single, flaming red hair.

He makes his exit, closing the window behind him and trying his best to repair it, although his frantic, hysterical attempts prove futile. Turning around, he leans back against the wall, latching his eyes shut against the soft light of the slowly-brightening moon and wishing this were all a dream. He just wants to wake up. He just wants—

There's a rustling in front of him. It's unthreatening, calm, safe, yet completely unexpected. His eyes snap open to see a familiar old figure staring him benevolently down, calculating his state with aging eyes that have known him since he was the sweet young age of eleven. They've known him too long. They've known him too well.

"Hello, Severus," the figure greets soothingly, his hands in the pockets of his long blue nightrobes. "I had a feeling you were here."

Severus Snape can't bring himself to say a thing. He has no air, thew, or otherwise means of speaking. There's nothing left of him but his own flesh, and even that isn't worthy of its blood.

The man in front of him tips his head toward the hill, motioning to the building he knows and remembers so well. His voice is soft and soothing as he proposes an offer.

"Come inside. We've all returned now; Rubeus will be here any moment after he's done sobbing in the woods," he urges, turning and expecting him to follow — and it's a salubrious, unassailable idea — so, unstable as he is, he complies.

But he oscillates in his decision. Because, if it weren't for the man he follows, he wouldn't be here at all.

Albus Dumbledore failed to protect what he asked him to.

And yet, in the breeze and the light rain, lit by the pale gray of the cloud-covered moon, he finds himself staying three steps behind him, moving up the hill to the place he once called home, stepping with each stride back into memories upon memories upon egregious, miserable memories.

So when you are asked again, after you've opened your eyes once more and have to ponder over the basis of a person in whole, know that this is it. This is the ironic satire we all follow. This is suffering. This is endearment. This is confusion and complexity and numb forgiveness.

This, with the silent ascend up the hill, following someone you trust as equally as they've betrayed you, is what it's like to be human.

This is your answer.


	2. 𝙸   >>   𝚃𝙷𝙴 𝚆𝙴𝙻𝙻𝙱𝙴𝙸𝙽𝙶 𝙾𝙵 𝚂𝙴𝚅𝙴𝚁𝚄𝚂 𝚂𝙽𝙰𝙿𝙴

< 1 DAY >

"I remember you."

His voice is quiet; strained, yet powerful beyond the sound itself. His long, slim fingers are interlocked as he stares his new recruit down from his side of his personal office table, which is bestrewed, yet organized in a way where it nevertheless feels open and flowing. A strong suit of his, of course — organization.

"Before you were this grown-up, I mean," he clarifies after receiving no verbal response. "Before you let your pain control you. When you were just a child."

The man he's looking at is young — the sweet age of twenty-one — thin, respectable, and yet so devoid of energy it seems he could easily pass as the thousand-upon-thousand-year-old Salazar Slytherin himself. He notices with some fond amusement that this young man is dressed head-to-toe in what can only be described as pure, concentrated angst: a flowing black cloak, a form-fitting set of meticulously-crafted clothing, tight sleeves, and a lot of buttons.

"In such an incongruous case, I claim your memory as comparatively tactile," comes the slow, unfriendly reply. Neither of them move for a few moments. The younger man's dark eyes glance almost scathingly around the room, re-observing the trinkets he had last seen just a few years prior, the difference being that then he was a student and now he is not. He's benumbed that his perception of the room hasn't changed since then. Even his clouded childhood memories stay truthful to this space, from the hanging decorative spheroids to the myriad of various hovering golden objects. He sees with a feeling of slight nostalgic adoration that even the quill pens on the desk look exactly how they did when he last saw them.

Both men seem to enjoy the silence. They take solace in absorbing it; one of the many things they have in common. While people like Minerva McGonagall thrive on tumultuous crowds and pointed administration, these two would rather close their eyes and listen to absolutely nothing. It's close to a luxury to be comfortable in this state in such close proximity with another person, so they both revel in it for as long as they can. And this goes on for quite some time until they both hesitantly welcome the occurring observation that they aren't accomplishing much of what they should be.

Finally, the older man shifts through the papers on his desk and speaks again.

"So what exactly is it that brings you here, boy?" he asks with his constant signature manner of completely unbothered nonchalance (knowing exactly why he's here).

"You know exactly why I'm here," the man reflects monotonously, severely disliking being referred to as 'boy'. "I don't like... over-explaining myself."

"Hm," the older man hums in consideration. He takes a file out of his stack of papers and begins to read it aloud.

"'Ninth January, nineteen-seventy-six,'" he narrates calmly, the flickering candle next to him making the page seem to be jumping about. "'For future reference: slightly heightened worry of the wellbeing of Severus Snape'— Does this sound familiar?— 'Constantly seeming to be awaiting something and keeping a strict eye on the windows. From personal observance, nothing has come. Extra quiet. Slightly concerning. Keep tabs.'"

There's a sigh. The young man leans forward and rests his face irritably in his hands. "Why are you reading that?"

"Because, Severus," the older man explains, "I'm making a point, and I'm presenting evidence so your cynicism can't cloud your judgment of it."

Snape takes a long breath in through his nose, moving his head up a bit and resting his jaw in the palm of his finger-tapping hand. Closing his eyes, he waves a loose wrist at the page again in hopeless prompting.

"Get on with it, then."

"That was the plan, yes," the older man replies calmly, shifting his glasses on the bridge his nose and turning back to his writing. "This next one isn't dated."

"Of all the minuscule details I could possibly rank in importance of a journal entry from most to least necessary," Snape replies, slow and dark and cold, "that one would easily take the unquestionable position of the last — and final — spot." He puts extra stress on the word spot, enunciating the T with a pop of his tongue. Dramatic. Articulated. Classy. His personal favorite combination.

"'Severus seems to have had an altercation with Lily Evans,'" the man continues innocently, for once not noticing the immediate dislike of the sentence from his company. "'He will not answer questions about this—'"

"Albus." It's a short interruption, but thick with what initially sounds like a warning bout of scorn.

A quick beat ensues. Dumbledore looks up from the paper.

"Severus?"

Snape is looking at Albus' desk now, although his eyes seem to not be fixed on anything in particular, his jaw tense, his previously-tapping fingers now preoccupied with the vocation of being unchangingly inert.

"Don't..." he says, trailing off for a moment as Albus Dumbledore stares expectantly over the rims of his rounded-square spectacles. He shifts again, leaning back in his seat and keeping his gaze averted.

"Don't mention Lily today."

Even though he tries to mask it, his voice is permeated with guilt, despairing grief and deep anguish. The kind that hits you in the stomach and the bottom of your throat as you breathe, as if those little parts of you are freezing while the rest of you stays warm enough to feel the torturous, eternal difference.

And Albus remembers.

"Oh," he breathes in sudden understanding. "Ah, yes. It's... At my age, it's — and please forgive me — easy to forget these things when you've seen it so often. And my, uh—" He twirls his hand forgetfully, as if to find a phrase from deep behind his brain. "—condolences."

Snape, unsurprisingly, says nothing.

"She was a very talented witch, as you remember," Albus continues. "I was deeply pained to hear about her passing. I liked her. Lovely student. One of Horace's favorites, if you recall." And Snape does, in fact, recall; Professor Horace Slughorn once had a shelf full to the edges with photos of his favorite students, and Severus' frame was meticulously placed behind the one of Lily the moment it was printed. "But the good ones rarely make it past forty. We lose the beloved ones too quickly, as if there's a limit to how long you can have with someone you care for so much, and they disappear when they reach it."

Severus' eyes begin to flick around the room, biting the inside of his cheek and gripping the arms of his chair in a way that morphs into something imperviously hermetic. His fingernails begin to turn white. Dumbledore, who notices with a quick glance at his hands, readjusts in his seat and, for the sake of his guest, slightly changes the subject.

"You know, Severus," Albus speaks softly, closing his little folder and casually sliding it back into its original spot, "I was going to make a point on how you don't like talking about your emotions, and how you bottle them up for years and years and never let them leave. And I was going to prove it with my notes, but I can also prove it now."

Snape raises his eyebrows in sarcastic anticipation, his eyes hardening into unblinking, dead stones. For a moment, his lips part as if to say something, but they close again.

Dumbledore leans on his desk with this arms, looking deeply into the empty, cob-webbed caverns of the student he remembers so well. Searching.

"What's today, Severus?"

Snape takes a defeated breath in, crossing his right foot over the ankle of his left. "Today," he replies, "is first November, nineteen-eighty-one."

Albus nods, watching the slightest mannerisms fade through countless emotions and reactions in the young man before him, noticing every little detail he knows he wouldn't be wanted to. He sees the pain and anguish so easily hidden to people that only glance over the skin. He keeps his focus on the eyes. "And what happened yesterday?"

Snape purses his lips and swallows, his elbows once again resting gently on the arms of Dumbledore's extra chair. His mouth opens, but, for a moment, speaks nothing.

"Yesterday, thirty-first October," Severus drones on in a way that, if you didn't know him well, would make you think he was completely emotionless, "you won the war."

Dumbledore tips his head. "We won the war," he corrects. "You may, of course, have been fighting against us, but you were just as relieved as we were when it was announced over. Don't hide that from me; I can see right through it."

"I lost," Snape corrects quietly with a short, insistent shake of his head, refusing to meet Albus' eyes. His eyebrows knot together, showing lines that, within the next few decades, will slowly become more permanent. "I lost the war yesterday in every sense of the phrase."

"But, in spirit, Severus," Dumbledore counters, "you were with us. And you should celebrate with us, hm?" He tries his best to sound optimistic; inclusive. It's an invitation he isn't surprised at all to hear the answer to.

"No."

Dumbledore pauses, faking surprise as he tempts Snape's emotions out of him. "...No?"

Severus promises himself not to say it aloud, but he feels strongly that it isn't his place to do such a thing as to join the joyful debauchery assumed from celebration. He shouldn't deserve to partake in such antics, especially not when he's so directly connected to the one sweeping misfortune that came of it.

His facial features harden. Dumbledore notices that this acts as something of a tic when he's trying to enshroud emotion. It isn't his usual disapproving and gloomy stare; it's lifeless. The eyes lose their direction. They start to relax their focus. They point at nothing, see nothing, are nothing. Gone.

"I led them to her," Snape reports apprehensively, the words making his own throat hurt, dripping black blood down his lungs, suffocating him beyond the point of spitting it back out to suspire again. In this moment, it's noted that this may be the most hopeless sentence Albus thinks he's ever heard.

Snape closes his eyes, more visibly clouded by pain now than he was earlier. He swallows weakly, taking a long breath in through his nose as Dumbledore empathetically weaves in and out of his mental map; flipping through his myriad of potential decisions regarding what to say.

After a bit of thought, he speaks. Softly, of course. He makes sure of it.

"And what are you feeling?" he asks, crossing his arms and leaning them onto the desk. Seeing the instantaneous and hesitant indignation on Snape's face, he adds a much-necessary tagline. "You can tell me, Severus. This is a safe place, and I promise you that I am a safe person."

He watches his former student almost with the intention of a scientist. Testing, comparing, studying again and again. He doesn't mind waiting for a reply; he can see it etched across his face already. He's examined the vials. He knows what the chemical reactions mean. He's completely aware of the circumstances before they're put into words.

"Take your time," he says passively, reaching for a book on his desk. His fingers absentmindedly caress the indented title on the cover, making their way to his bookmark in hopes of opening it.

"I—" Snape begins before cutting himself off.

Dumbledore's fingers pause.

There's a heavy chill to the air, as if the room is shifting around the two wizards. As if the air itself longs to match them.

"Yes?" Albus asks.

Snape takes a breath and quickly stands up, ironically beginning to pace back and forth with a visibly jaunty fashion. With each turn he takes, he makes certain to pull his cloak with him, making it twist and flow behind his trail, swiftly emulating a deep black waterfall off his failed and fragmented shoulders.

"...saw her."

Dumbledore squints at the statement. "Hm?"

Severus closes his eyes, turning his face slightly to the ceiling. "I shouldn't have. It wasn't my place to do so," he utters with the aplomb that of a young lamb, his fingers curling slightly at his sides. "But when I heard what had become of their house, and their... child, even, I had no choice. I let my sentiment get in the way.

"I went to their home," he confesses in continuum, his pointed shoes scraping softly on the undisturbed, burnished stone floor. "I got there before you sent Rubeus to get the boy. I had... to know; I had to see it."

Albus links his hands together, his unblinking gaze resting on his antediluvian scholar as he rotates on his heels and begins to pace again, his pelerine-bearing cloak gliding peacefully behind his veiling body of absolute despair.

"I saw James Potter lifeless on the stairs," Severus discloses, "and I am guilty to say that I felt nothing other than augmented concern for Lily alone. I stepped over his body without a second thought. His glasses were scattered on the floor. I postulate that they snapped willingly under my foot.

"At first I didn't know which room to enter. I believe there were three. Part of me romanticized the fact that I was visiting the home of someone I cared for. The rest feared it."

Dumbledore nods, taking this all willingly into account. "You needed closure, I assume," he concludes. "There's no problem with wanting to visit a passed friend. It helps the physce, you know. That's what they all say."

Severus stops slowly in his tracks, his eyes flitting left and right as he recalls his visual memory. He's quiet now; reliving it all in his head. His voice isn't strong enough to narrate it all aloud.

He remembers deciding to follow the rubble, turning into the farthest room in the hall as despair washed slowly over him. He didn't see her at first; he saw the boy. The room was silent, and he had taken it as a confirmation of death when he realized that nobody was holding the child. His breath hitching, he took another step into the room.

And then he'd seen her. 

He'd seen her and it struck him harshly in the abdomen, pushing him back against the wall as he gripped his ribs and wondered for a moment if he was dying, too.

His fingers unfurl again as he imagines the feeling of Lily's hair as he then rushed over to her on his useless, unavailing knees and cradled her against his chest, rocking back and forth, sobbing helplessly into the sweet, familiar scent of her almond perfume with no intention of leaving her there on that freshly-damaged floor until he died next to her himself. His tongue swells in his mouth. He blinks rapidly, looking at the ground beneath him and pushing the impending tears out of his sight. It takes effort. This was only yesterday — just twenty-four hours prior. Too soon to remember. Too soon to forget.

"Severus."

Dumbledore is standing behind him now. He doesn't know exactly when it was that this happened.

He feels a hand on his shoulder that he didn't notice before. Snapping out of his vision, he realizes with some self-directed contempt that the tears he's been trying with so much effort to contain have already spilled over his eyes and down his chin.

Albus' hand is warm, kind, pacifying. It's such a comfort given the fact that Snape doesn't even remember the last time he felt the touch of another person for a purpose not including hazard or formidable impulsion. For one of the first recounted times in his isolated life, he feels cherished. Snug. Out of danger from all the possible twists and turns that could lead to his eventual — and quite unavoidable — destruction.

"Sit down, Severus," Dumbledore murmurs consolingly, guiding him back to the chair by his desk. "Give yourself a minute. I've got time and so do you."

Snape feels himself land on the seat cushion, but he barely has the capability to process it. His hands have lost all feeling. He doesn't notice them fall over the side of the armrests and drape there like ragdolls. He can barely even hear the fabric move around the skin on his wrists.

"Now, I don't know if you're one for tea," Albus speaks quietly, taking a kettle and some herbs from one of his many cabinets, "but something warm always helps a person in crisis. I was gifted this specific kettle last year from a Half-Blood student like yourself. It's a Muggle brand. I'm sure you're familiar."

He sets it to hover in the air, lighting a small flame under it with his wand. In this modest moment, Severus, though his voice is thick with paralyzing emotion, finds a near-imperceptible stretch of strength to speak again.

"I'm not very well-versed in the Muggle world," he corrects slowly, sniffing as he wipes his bottom eyelids with the corner of his sleeve. "My father didn't spend enough time with us to teach its ways. Sometimes I thought he would, but it all ended in the staggering-yet-unsurprising realization that I was only an impressionable child full of false hope."

Albus sets some herbs in a small sort of sieve — Severus can only assume it's something designed specifically for the making of tea — and nods intently at the words.

"Few people have the privilege of getting to know their fathers," he remarks. "I didn't know mine too well, either. But sometimes that's for the best." As the kettle begins to steam, he unignites the small fire below it and grabs the handle from its position in the air. "Fathers that don't have the intention of supporting their children are the ones we never meet. Perhaps you'd best consider yourself on the lucky side. Sugar? Cream?"

"Ah, both," Snape answers, pondering the rest of Dumbledore's words rather than replying to them. He sniffles shortly, his face still damp with his own memories but his eyes keeping the rest of them in. Albus hands him a warm teacup, which he takes openly, looking down at the comforting light brown color swirling about inside.

"Tell me," Dumbledore says, sitting down at his desk chair as Severus slowly comes back to reality. "Other than the turmoil I know you've been dragged through up until now, and other than your current grievances, do you feel as though there's something else weighing you down?"

"I don't need a therapist," Snape remarks at the question, and Dumbledore shrugs.

"I'm not asking to be a therapist, Severus," he replies, taking a sip of his own tea, which he's put neither cream nor sugar into. "I'm asking because I'm genuinely interested, and I think it might help you if you had a list of personal stressors so you have something to take from when you're feeling this way. So, I mean, you'll be reviewing your life..." He clears his throat. "...all the time."

Although it's intended to be a joke poking fun at his constant state of dull sorrow, Severus tips his head and raises his eyebrows, accepting it as a fair point. Because it's true.

He sips the tea, the sweet, earthy taste overwhelming his senses, reminding him of something archaic and far away. He likes the feeling it evokes from him. It's soothing and genial, the warmth permeating through him as it goes down.

"I'm closing the world around myself," he announces after some thought. Dumbledore contemplates this deeply, seeming to trace the words with his eyes as if they're written out as he speaks them onto the golden-brown wall. "And it's me that's doing it. I'm the one to blame." He takes another small sip of the tea. "Honestly, Albus, to be most transparent, I'm nearly glad it's happening. I don't deem I deserve much else." His foot taps on the floor.

"Severus, look at me," Dumbledore urges swiftly, leaning forward as if his next sentence is to be the most important one he's ever shared. Snape looks up from his teacup, locking eyes with him and freezing as if expecting a blow to the chest. Of course, it's only his demons that give him the notion.

"If it weren't for you," Albus asserts in a low hum, past the point of aiming to be heartening and instead hitting reason head-on, "this prophecy wouldn't have even begun."

They sit in silence, Snape's lips resting still and petrified on his teacup as they stare one another down. Dumbledore moves back to his files, taking the previous folder out again and flipping through the contents with his thumb. 

"I offered you a position here last year, if you recall," he presents with a soft change of conversational direction. "The difference was that then we had no room for you. But now, as I'm sure you've heard, Slughorn has fled out of fear of being converted by Lord Voldemort, so we have an open spot to fill, although it isn't your desired Defense Against the Dark Arts occupation."

"I understand," mutters Snape, setting the teacup to hover next to him in interest.

"Not only did Horace leave behind the potions class, which is what I'm proposing to you, but he also left an open position for the Head of Slytherin," Dumbledore continues further, "so the entire House is left without direction for the time being. We'll need someone to step in."

"Is that why you wanted to meet with me?" Severus asks with light sarcasm. "Am I a mere key to fit into any old door?"

"Not nearly at all, Severus. You were a talented student; I'm not inclined to go about choosing casual, temporary stand-ins. This is completely intentional. For the long run." Albus takes a quill pen, intending wholeheartedly to use it, and takes a document labeled Severus Snape out of the folder.

"So," he proceeds, the tip of the pen hovering expectantly over the leaf of parchment, "if you're still willing to keep the promise we made that night last year, I'd like to openly welcome you to the occupation of Potions Professor and the representative of the Slytherin house." He looks unthreateningly at Severus, who he can tell is somewhat taken off-guard. "Take your time."

Snape takes a long breath, knowing he isn't thinking clearly but juggling the option nonetheless. The conclusion he comes to, essentially, is that if he is to decline, he'll have nowhere else to go. Nothing to do. No rock to hide under.

"I made the promise when I feared the worst," he recalls quietly, his gaze scraping along the floor, studying the legs of the furniture and old footprints from past visitors, "and now that the worst has happened, I can stand cemented in my word of honor."

Standing up, he finishes his tea and places it on the corner of Dumbledore's desk. Setting his jaw in final arbitration, he gives a small nod to the man he feels he's come to know so much more within this hour alone. Looking down at the sheet of paper beneath Albus Dumbledore's hand, he gives a confident voice of validation towards the movement of his pen.

"I will protect Harry Potter."

Albus nods in silent victory, scribbling the words Hogwarts Professor into the occupations section of the sheet. Handing it to Severus, he gives him his pen and points at the bottom of the page.

"Sign here," he instructs.

Snape gently holds the pen, memorizing its texture under his fingers as he decides to make one of the most significant changes in his life that he may ever encounter. The quill feels heavier than usual; his whole future sits within it. He likes this feeling of power over his own fate, reveling in the rushing sensation linked to knowing that all the events including and leading up to his own death could be completely altered by signing his insignificant name on this insignificant document in this insignificant room. The thrill is exhausting. Liberating.

Leaning over the desk, he connects the ink tip to the small box in the bottom righthand corner, gliding it along the sheet in his stiff cursive writing and wholeheartedly confirming his consent. Standing straight up again, he shakes Dumbledore's awaiting hand.

"I'll be looking forward to working with you, Severus," Albus remarks, a cool smile resting beneath his long brown-to-gray-fading mustache.

"I hope the same," Snape replies genuinely, turning to the door. "But you'd best stay on your toes. People often tell me I'll be the death of them. We wouldn't want to add you to the list."

And he leaves the room, his cloak fluttering aimlessly behind him as he directs himself back downstairs and out of the building, not quite sure if it's Dumbledore himself or the tea that's making him feel so warm.


	3. 𝙸𝙸   >>   𝚁𝙴𝙻𝙸𝚅𝙸𝙽𝙶 𝚁𝙴𝙼𝚄𝚂

< 4 DAYS >

The potions room is comfortably desolate. Inky, grungy, and undisturbed, the lack of clutter gives Severus a rather restful feeling; one he associates with the atmospheric ambience of a fresh start. A clean, blank slate. Complete isolation in the most superior possible way.

He's felt this emotion only once before. It happened when he graduated from Hogwarts and acquired his own living space. One where he didn't have to fear or speak to people and he didn't have to think about his father. It's a good feeling. Freeing, perhaps. Makes one feel as though they're made of air.

He remembers this room well, but he doesn't hold it in much esteem. He dislikes immensely how it's still arranged exactly the same as it was when he attended. Makes him feel as though he has to completely imitate everything that Slughorn has left behind: the parties, the clubs, the socializing, the favoritism. He abhors the thought. If anything, he'd want to have it match the style of his own home. He'll be living here during the school year anyway. He figures he might as well make it feel fitting.

He begins extracting the various integrant bottles from the dusty shelves, subtly irked that they aren't organized in alphabetical order but rather in groups of matching visual attributes. It'll take him a minimum of a day to sort them correctly; he's sure of it.

Multiple jars aren't labeled, so he groans as he forces himself to take the extra mile and mark them on his own. Viciously tearing some parchment and a pen from his desk, he scrawls names out in a violent hand and wonders exactly what it is that he's let himself agree to.

"Horace left you an open position," he spits derisively under his breath. "Nothing much, just teaching some children how to make things and, oh, also, reinstating four quintillion nugatory bottles of—"

Picking up another jar, his eyebrows knit themselves together as he looks inside.

"This isn't castor oil. Why did he put the castor oil label on the knotgrass decanter?" He pops open the lid and smells the plant inside. He maintains most sincerely: "If that impertinent mockery of a wizard ever makes his way back..."

This sentence fades out just like the last as the realization hits him that any of these other bottles could also be mislabeled and he'll surely have to inspect each and every one of them to make sure they aren't. Gritting his teeth and wresting them all off the shelves, he scatters them over the nearest work table and moves to the next shelf, dropping the jars onto the next table, and so on and so on until he's left at the last ledge, looking over the vial-ridden room with contemptuous dread for his upcoming project. 

If he's estimated correctly, given the assumption that he has been able to grab eleven bottles per trip, he's just unladen roughly seven hundred and four flasks in totality from the shelving units. That's seven hundred and four bottles to inspect, reorder, relabel and put back onto the shelves of which he's just thrown them off.

He disregards his earlier adoration for the lack of clutter. Now disorder is all that the room is, surrounding him and drowning all hopes of making a quick move into his new position. In this moment, he boils at the thought of Slughorn ever functioning like this in the first place, let alone abandoning his post at the first premonition of demise and leaving it all for someone else to fill and sort through. Cowardice — it's something Snape disfavors to a colossal degree. Slughorn himself he disfavors more.

Taking a deep breath, Snape coaxes himself into beginning his work. He decides he may as well organize them into alphabetical order simultaneously while he checks them, so he makes a mental map of the floor, assigning a letter to each small segment and picking up the first bottle from the table to his left. He wishes there were a spell for this, but he figures that even spellworking couldn't do this with the standard acquired from one's own hands and eyes.

Pleased to see the leeches correctly labeled, he hovers the jar over to where he imagines the L section to be and moves on. Just around seven hundred and three to go. He picks up the next bottle. Studies it.

"Well," comes a voice from the entrance, making him twirl around, slightly startled, to face it immediately. "If it isn't Severus Snape!"

The man standing in the entrance is immediately recognized by Snape as none other than Remus Lupin, who stands there with the captured energy of a young boy. Phlegmatic, clean-shaven, and wholly untethered, he doesn't appear to have an ounce of disquietude about him. He leans against the doorframe, his hands resting — unbothered — in the sewn pockets of his thin, buttoned vest.

"Remus," Snape regards flatly, turning back to his sorting and reassigning the label of the bottle in his hand.

"Thought you'd be in here," Lupin says loquaciously, treading casually into the room. "Heard about your interest in the Order."

"What interest?" Snape asks in the most monotonous tone he can manage, preoccupying himself with relabeling the next four containers to avoid all actual conversational connection with this man.

"Ah, yes," Lupin sighs. "I mean to say that Dumbledore brought it up with us all yesterday. Didn't specifically say you were interested but rather that it was in 'your best interest' to take up the offer."

"Well, now that I know you're part of it," Snape drones back, "I might have to reconsider my previous inquisitiveness." He puts down his bottles and turns to Remus, giving him an unmoving stare that only confirms that he isn't even remotely joking.

Lupin says nothing aloud, but his eyes aren't once irresolute in posing the unappreciative promulgation: "Really?"

"Besides, Remus, I'm very aware that just four days ago, the Order disbanded due to the end of the war," Snape intones. "It's inane allying with a structure that no longer stands."

Remus gives him a flat look before replying. "I almost expected that Albus would have told you, but I see now how foolish it is to rely on him for any task management whatsoever," he utters.

Snape scoffs. "Yes."

"The Order," Lupin begins to explain, "although currently on pause, is still being managed." He leans back against a shelf. He likes to lean on things. "Albus wants to have a set plan for it in case we must begin our regular meetings again. And, because we know that You-Know-Who—"

"Voldemort," Snape corrects passively.

"—could easily still be out there," Remus continues, "we want to be ready now. And we want to know for sure that you can join us."

He's met by silence as Snape tears a piece of parchment and scribbles a label onto the surface. He waits tolerantly, not benumbed at all by his received response.

"Why... is it," Severus challenges, his gaze unheated as it threatens its way along Lupin's figure, "that you're... even here?" Which is a fair question. Remus Lupin in no way works at Hogwarts and, given the unsteady conviction that Snape has any sort of say in the matter, never will.

"Visiting Albus," Remus replies, volitionally making his words as unhelpful and cryptic as possible. To match the room, of course.

Severus, although it isn't the most obvious gesture, tightens his jaw and pivots back to his self-assigned commission. Lupin steps forward amiably, tipping his head to the jars on the table. 

"Need help with that?" he asks. Snape steps back, keeping a solid distance between them. He doesn't intend to appear companionable with this man.

"I don't need," he replies slowly, adhering a fresh label on an onion juice jar, "anything."

Lupin takes a bottle from a neighboring table anyway, crinkling his nose as he peers inside. Taking the cork off the top, he removes the label from its position on the internal side of the glass and grabs his own sheet of parchment, writing Liver in a hand far different from Snape's own and gluing it inside.

"Are you mad about our past, Severus?" he asks without any sort of emotional attachment to the sentence whatsoever. He casually meets Snape's eyes, making him turn disinterestedly back to his jars.

"Still hanging around with your little posse?" Severus asks passively in return. "Sirius and Peter and - oh, right." He points his wand at Lupin in unthreatening identification. "James."

Lupin's expression ossifies as he roughly grabs the next bottle off the table. "I think you forget that I'm hanging around all of them just as much as you're hanging around Lily."

There's a tense silence, the blow making Snape's eye twitch. In immediate-yet-not-so-evident remorse, Lupin clears his throat and attempts to counteract it.

"How are you doing, by the way?" he asks, trying his best to sound congenial. Snape raises his brows and silently returns to his work. 

He says nothing. He imagines the answer to be palpable enough where it isn't one he has to ululate about like he did so recently in Dumbledore's office.

"Listen," Lupin suspires, sounding somewhat exhausted at the conversation, "I just don't think it's reasonable to have such a rift between us over some childish predispositions. Don't you agree?" He sticks another label into a jar.

"Some events are only three years old, Remus," Snape replies, moving three jars to the M spot on the floor with a flick of his wand.

"Three years is a long time to hold onto things you don't need," Remus attests, looking down at the jar in his loose grip. "Speaking of which, this is the fourth bottle of urine I've come across thus far. Do you really need that much? Where does it even come from?"

He sets the bottles down, sensibly not expecting a response. And, for a minute or so, he's right. He gets nothing. 

But after another jar is lifted to its rightful spot on the hardwood floor, Snape pauses, staring off at the wall in contemplation for a few moments before deciding to speak anyway.

"Rumor has it," he replies nonchalantly, "that throughout all of Hogwarts history, Slughorn has never been sighted in the bathrooms."

Lupin is quiet as he processes the sentence, his facial expressions clearly taken aback, his eyes screaming, 'did you just...?!' but his mouth, although open in awe, screaming nothing.

And finally, with all the surprised delectation in the world, all the kick of a young flower in its first bloom, he laughs. The corners of his lips turn up into a quiet chuckle as it sinks in that Severus Snape, one of his least respecting acquaintances who seems to previously have had no sense of humor or furthermore general emotion, has just told him a joke, and he moreover thinks it's funny.

"Ah," he replies finally, charmed, almost proud of the fact that he's just heard so much witticism from such an unfeeling man, "he's using the trusty old repurposing method, hm?"

"Good for the environment, I'm sure," Severus replies, his face, although still stoic, seeming to glow a little brighter in the faint window light.

"I'd bet with all this avoiding toilets over the years," Remus adds flippantly, "now that he's in hiding without any available jars, he might be panicky about having to finally use one."

Snape's mouth twitches slightly upward as he transports five new bottles to their respective areas. "Oh, don't worry. I think he'll be good for a while; there's no way he hasn't pissed himself out of fear already."

Lupin smiles appreciatively downward as he relabels a salt jar. He's sure that this moment — casual banter as if he's talking to an old friend instead of a spiteful peer — is a rare one, so he almost wants to give himself a mental note to remember it. Something interesting to recall later. Eventful. Something to feel sly for witnessing.

But the moment passes as soon as he's had the time to discern it much at all, and they're left in the small, dusty silence as they go through jar after jar after jar, searching for mistakes and only halfheartedly fettling them.

"Really, though," Remus remarks in afterthought, a hoard of redone bottles now collecting rapidly at his feet as he forgets to sort them out, "Slughorn leaving on a whim like this? Not the most benevolent move."

"Mm," Severus voices in agreement, grabbing a new stack of parchment from a cupboard and hoisting it onto the child-sized table with a sweep of his thigh. "Luckily I somewhat know what I'm doing."

"You were good at potions from what I remember. Is that right?" Remus asks, grabbing half the parchment bundle as Severus hands it to him with an outstretched arm.

"I wasn't ostensibly ungifted, by any means," Snape replies with a somewhat uncomfortably avoidant manner. "I had that... book I carried around all the time. The potions one. I should find that. I never brought it off when I left; that's irrefutable."

Lupin has made his way to the floor, where he sits with one leg up and one flat on the old wooden boards. "Gotta be around here somewhere if you never brought it home," he guides him encouragingly. "By the way, where are you putting the nettle?"

He's surrounded by unmoved bottles at this point. He noticed this immediately upon sitting down and realizing that no floor space was presently available anymore, so he's now working hard to sort them all out of the way. Snape points loosely with his wand at a nearby group of jars.

"Over with the other Ns somewhere on your left," he instructs. "You'll see it. Neem oil and nightshade on the corner there."

Lupin, rather than using his own wand, simply pushes the bottles to where they belong with his hands before sitting back in his initial position. "Well, if I chance upon your little spell-book, I'll be sure to let you know," he promises lightly, tearing a new strip of parchment with a strong and sudden jolt that, for an easily-missed moment, makes Snape wince.

"Mm. Yes," he replies absently, turning back to look at the remaining vessels. He's pleasantly surprised to see that they're making good progress. He estimates that maybe a hundred are already done. Only six hundred left to go.

Remus clears his throat with a sense that small talk isn't quite welcome in the room. His shoulders dip as he takes a good look at Severus, slouching over in enervated defeat. His voice sounds so matter-of-fact as it leaves him, although his face says otherwise. He looks rather snuffed. 

"You're difficult to talk to, you know," he says, although it's less of an accusation than it is an admittance. Snape lifts his chin, looking down at his associate, who sits cross-legged now as he relabels the jars in a way that just slightly nettles him. The formatted alignment of the titles are just the smallest bit off; the handwriting the most minuscule of a grain too light.

"Hm," he replies, as if it's at all possible that this is something he won't lose sleep over. He likes to give off the notion that he doesn't give a damn. Lupin, however, sees past this forthwith, looking down as he spins a bottle in his hand.

This is something he does. Something he's always done. Severus watches him toss the little jar a few centimeters into the air, turning it as he does, and letting it land exactly where it started, this time on a new face. It eats into the back of his head, the motion familiar and painful and close and distant, a carousel of vintage evocations fluttering out at him, hitting him in the face with their pointed folds, creases bent for the sole purpose of digging into his skin.

Time turns. Light twists into a different shade, folding from the dark potions room into the scintillating yellow outdoors. He sees himself, younger, sitting under a tree, book in hand. The potions book, of course — the one he's questing for now.

Lily has just written something in it. He can't remember exactly what it is. His memory smears the ink.

"Well, if it isn't my good bloke, Snivellus," comes the voice of James Potter. His wealthy, polished shoes part the grass with each step. He knows that such a sobriquet isn't welcome. That's precisely why it's bled its way out of his throat. "Fancy seeing you here on this lovely... undeservingly cloudy day."

Pettigrew and Black stand behind him, elbowing each other in the ribs. Remus Lupin isn't too far behind.

That's something that Snape remembers well. Lupin avoids his gaze, focusing his attention on an object in his hand, which he's tossing lightly into the air, catching it and making it spin with another flick of his wrist. Normally, it's something odd like a pen or a coin, but today it's a rotting apple from the ground beside him.

"Hello, James," Lily greets Potter too ebulliently, giving him a small wave and tucking her hair behind her ear. Severus sets his jaw and keeps his eyes fixed on his book, flipping to another page and pretending to be involved in it.

"Looks like you're spending your time with this little rat again, hm?" James lampoons, taking out his wand and setting the tip on the open page of the potions book. Severus looks up, keeping his eyes unblinking, jaw tight.

"You're not associating with rats any less, are you now?" he asks softly, snapping his book shut and tucking it into his robes, shielding it from the harsh tip of the wand being raised at it. James raises his eyebrows in slight disrelish at the accusation, turning around to his group with a scornful sneer.

"He really just called you lot a bunch of rats," he snarls, motioning to Snape with a tip of his head. Black laughs formidably, Pettigrew smirking with nauseous loathing; a Herculean equivalent to the wrath of the sun itself. Lupin looks down at the apple in his hand, avoiding everything he can manage to. Potter doesn't seem to notice.

"Is there a problem?" Severus seethes, slowly standing up to meet Potter's advantageous height with his own. "Don't think I wasn't present when we first learnt how to cast a patronus. Don't think I didn't catch you, Pettigrew—" He narrows his eyes at Peter, who tightens his lips in boiling, waxy agitation, "—struggling for days to even get close before tragically catching a weak glimpse of an overfed, limping, insignificant little rat."

Lily, who's been tensely quiet since the memory began, stands up now. She exists suddenly in the space between where Severus and James are smoldering, switching a disaffected glance between the two.

"Come on, urchins," she incites pointedly, giving each of them a soft shove backwards on the chest, "you're better than this. The both of you."

They reflect the words, not a single syllable imbibing into their consciousness in the least. Severus steps around her, ignoring her displeased glare of warning as he lifts his chin to his opponents.

"Enthralling choice, Potter, deciding that I'm so unworthy of your respect due to my assumed disproportionate number of flaws. However, it... seems everyone here has some sort of downfall to them, don't you think?" he asks backhandedly, keeping his composure as a façade to his affectedness. "You, James, of course, are hotheaded. Don't deny or attempt to debate that one; you'll just prove it further. And Sirius."

He tips his head to make eye contact with the boy, who seems almost a perfect reflection of himself, but shorter and angrier. A Hobbit-Snape, he'd remark, but that's too much of a compliment for his liking. "Ah, yes. You and your careless decisions, always coming back to hit you in the back of the head, much unlike your friend Lupin over here— yes, hello— who seems to be uneasily pedantic, to say the least, and that's a generous term; be grateful I picked it."

"Severus." Lily hisses. "Get. A. Grip."

Lupin raises a quizzical brow for a most brief span of time before apathetically continuing to toss his apple about in his palm again. Potter tenses his fists, his pointer finger turning white as it presses against the length of his wand.

"And Pettigrew, of course," Snape pursues. "You do a unswerving job of protecting his synthetic dignity like the insufferable guard dog you are, James. I commend your unspeakably useless effort."

"Severus Snape!" Lily thunders at him, grabbing his shoulder with her gloved hand just to be shrugged off again. "Stop it, for the sake of Merlin's staff. Zip it. Right now."

"Lamentably, Potter," Severus finishes, "it's really no use, is it? I've been putting up with your relentless belittling for years when all that either of us are made of comes down to aseptic, unalloyed odium."

And, finally, he shuts up. 

James gives him a long look, his hold a bit looser on his wand now. Lily holds her face, galled, in her hands.

"Severus," Potter replies neutrally, his eyes visibly strained as he tries to figure out how that's even spelled, "I genuinely don't know what that means."

Lily shakes her head and squeezes her eyes shut. "Don't tell him," she pleads, because she knows it must be bad. Him and his big words.

"Mm," Snape replies. "It means we're substantially the scum of the earth, when you get down to it."

James sighs, twisting back around to get a look at his other groupmates. "We've let him talk for too long, haven't we?"

Truth be told, this is the first time Severus has decided to talk back at all. Taken off-guard, all of them share an alienated look before Potter turns back around and casually kicks the freshly-rained-on mud onto Snape's robes. His teeth bared, he stares icily into his eyes and gives one small order, making him tense up and grip his book tighter beneath his sleeve.

"Beat him," James breathes, "The hell. Up."

Lily has, at this point, disappeared. It's like her to do this. Every time Severus has needed her most, she's been absent, and this includes the occasion of her own cataclysmic demise. Unease rises in Severus' throat, tingling the base of his skull and freezing his spine. Where's Dumbledore when you need him? He's gone now and he's gone every other time there's order to be kept. McGonagall is no better; she's barely ever seen these days at all.

Sirius takes a step forward, shoving James ahead of him as he does, urging him to move first. Snape considers running away. But, for some reason, he can't help but stay. He can't help but live in the hurt, because hurt is all he's ever known. It's his source of comfort; normalcy. It feels like home.

He doesn't remember exactly who hits him first, but he's standing one moment and on the ground the next, his nose spurting blood down his lips and one of his ribs in searing agony. He's kicked, whimpering, grunting with each delivered blow. There are three pairs of feet hitting him. They never miss.

"Do something, Remus," James orders at Lupin, who's standing firmly back. "You bloody useless piece of flesh. Don't just stand there!"

Severus, for a moment, meets his eyes, pleading silently at him. But he moves for neither party. He doesn't join in, and he doesn't stop it.

This whole time, the apple in Remus Lupin's grip is being spun in his hand. Up, round, down, repeat. Watching. Taunting. Seething from its spot in complete safety.

Safety. That's a feeling Snape has never known, and will arguably never fully meet.

"Remus!" Potter hollers again. "Unless you want a spot on the ground, too, you'd better do a damned thing!" He kicks Severus in the cheek now, tearing the skin and making his vision go black for a moment. When it clears, he watches Lupin contemplate all the words. He watches him think. He wishes he'd do it faster.

Remus, visibly torn and emotionally ambiguous, stops his tossing. Steadily, aimed, prepared, he grips the apple.

The memory cuts off.

Severus quickly finds himself back in the potions room again, observing Lupin's hand as it flicks the little bottle up into the air. The trees and grass fade out and he's met with darkness and the smell of salt, reminding him that this is the closest thing he'll ever get to soundness of mind. The closest he'll ever be to consolation: waking up from a memory.

Yes. He's here now, and James isn't. It's alright. It's safe.

He remembers with a sharp pang that Lily isn't here, either. It takes him an overwhelming bout of strength to keep himself from doubling over and curling up on the floor. He grits his teeth in silence.

"...and that's, essentially, his plan with the Order reform," Lupin continues, although Snape admittedly has no idea what it is that he's continuing.

"Sorry, what was that?" he asks weakly, turning back to the bottles on the worktable. Remus, still, tosses his current jar into the air. Severus decides he doesn't like when he does that.

"I was saying that you should join the Order of the Phoenix," Lupin replies insouciantly. "I have a, uh, card I can give you. It's in one of these pockets, I think..." He fishes through his meticulously-stitched vest and finally puts the bottle down. Standing back up again, he takes out a small square of paper and places it in Snape's slightly quivering hand.

"My address," he explains bluntly, cutting to the chase because he knows that it's what Severus prefers. "We've been meeting there since..." He looks down at the floor, awkwardly fitting his hands into his pockets. "Well."

Snape nods in delayed understanding, his heart still anxiously palpitating in his chest. His nose, although unmarred, still seems to throb. He can still taste the blood.

Remus, having an evident aptitude concerning emotions, seems to notice as Severus wavers on his feet. Attempting to not make this too obvious, he blinks and glances swiftly at the floor before deciding on something to say.

"I know it's..." He takes a breath, his eyes fixed on the remaining bottles on the table. "...bleak."

Snape scrunches up his face, his lips turning into a sickened grimace as he almost cowers from the words. He wants him to shut up. To close his mouth and keep it that way. His stomach clenches against his own will.

"We're all feeling it, Severus," Lupin continues, setting his borrowed pen and parchment back down on the table they're next to. "It's heavy, and it's a weight we must all learn to carry for a very long time."

There's a devastating truth to this. Their shoulders are already plagued and breaking with the immense pressure the preceding few days have brought. And it's something they'll have to get used to, because it's only going to build as they protect the boy — the boy, of course, that began this whole ordeal; the boy that's destined to eventually relieve it. 

Out of the two of them in the room, only one believes that it'll all be worth it in the end. The other is still grimacing over the table.

"I know it's hit you a lot harder than the rest of us," Remus consoles, "so I just want to say that... anything you need, really, anything at all, I'm here to help. Anytime. Any day. Just let me know."

He doesn't touch him. Normally, when saying such a thing, he'd place a hand on the shoulder or give a reassuring pat, but he's noticed in the past how each unsuspected prod from an untrusted individual makes Severus wince and twitch away. He knows that, with him, it might be just as comforting — if not more — to refrain from laying a hand on him at all.

"You have my address," he states simply, and, before Snape can open his nauseated eyes again, he's departed from the feverishly empty room, leaving nothing in his trail other than his small paper card and two hundred and fifty-one relabeled bottles, perfectly organized exactly where they should be on the cool wood floor.

There's only one table worth of jars leftover to go through. Just about an hour's work. An hour to be alone and to think and to do something so it's fully exemplary and exactly the way it should be done. To have control.

However, though he doesn't take to conceding it, if it weren't for Lupin's help, he'd be doing this for another week.

Sighing and straightening his spine, Severus ignores the convulsions of his abdomen, pushing the sensation away and influencing himself to omit that they even began. He looks down at his hand, his stiff and vacillating fingers gripping tightly to Lupin's card. He considers throwing it away, but, for some reason, he doesn't. Instead, he slips it gently into one of the many pockets sewn onto the inside of his soft, forgiving robes.

Can the past be forgiven?

He contemplates this heavily as he spends the rest of his night fixing all the bottles and beginning the process of putting them back on the forgotten, dusted shelves. His conclusion persistently undulates. For once in his life, he isn't sure what he thinks.

Does it make sense to disregard someone's wrongs? To stop dwelling on something that no longer happens? This is inordinately arcane. He changes his approach. 

If one drops ink into a basin of water, he questions, is it possible for it to eventually clear? Does it evaporate with the rest of it?

He decides that no, it doesn't. It'll still stain the bowl. It'll still be present, engrained into the material around it in a way that not even scrubbing can fully ease.

But maybe, once all of it is cleared away and only a faint trace of it is left, perhaps it matters less.

So can history be forgiven?

No. He doesn't think so.

But it's possible, he thinks — he hopes — that the people can. Or, at least, that they can start to be.

He fixes his last jar, setting it down on the floor in its rightful spot, taking a good look at all the bottles that Remus helped him reassess.

Perhaps, if an effort is made, he decides, history can attempt to be cleared.

And perhaps he has more connections here than he thought he did.


	4. 𝙸𝙸𝙸   >>   𝙾𝙽𝙴'𝚂 𝚀𝚄𝙾𝚃𝙸𝙳𝙸𝙰𝙽 𝙿𝚄𝚁𝙿𝙾𝚂𝙴

< 1 WEEK >

There's a stage of denial when one's quotidian purpose is grappling to keep someone alive when they're already very, very dead.

This happens when you speed-run the levels of grief; when you force them out and eschew feeling them and you have no choice but to move to the next point, and the next and the next, until you mindlessly caper back to the beginning again and go through a never-ending loop of unprocessed loss.

Severus Snape, with the prearrangement of keeping Lily with him, is searching for a very specific page in a very specific book. So specific, in fact, that he can't even remember what book or page it is.

Lily wrote something on that page. And, like a wolf thirsting extraneously for cruor, he wants that writing. He wants to touch it with his own fingertips and glance over the light indentations from her feather pen. He wants to keep her close to him, however loosely it may be.

So he's scrounging about his new office, looking mercilessly for any stack of books — any at all — that could help him find this one small page. The potions room itself had nothing. This one hopefully does.

Turning the office practically upside-down and still finding damn all, he purses his lips in vexation and slumps himself into his desk chair. His gaze fixes itself on the abandoned shelves and cabinets around him, only appearing to be animated, in a sense, due to the dimly lit fireplace next to them.

He wonders for a brief moment if the book is something he can summon.

Because it's here. It must be in this school because Hogwarts is precisely where he left it. There would be no reason for Slughorn to take it with him, let alone remove it from the area at all. So there must be a way to get it to come to him if he has a general idea of where it may be.

But he's painfully aware that, with the common Accio spell, he'll achieve nothing without knowing the very specific visual aspects of the book. The spell itself doesn't do much other than damaging walls as the object is pulled through them. To him, it's worthless. It's always been; nobody over the age of thirteen really uses it unless they have to teach the thirteen-year-olds how it works.

In boredom, he opens all the drawers next to him in the sides of his desk, noting that the only things Horace left behind were a few jars of ink and a drawer full of golden-hued quill pens. He shuts them again with a careless shove, leaning back in his seat and quietly disparaging the expansive room around him, feeling the comforting darkness close slowly in on his withered sense of reality.

For the sake of trying, he decides to see if there's anything at all that he can envisage about the book.

He knows it was a textbook. He used it in his potions classes; he's sure of that.

But when he tries to conceptualize the feeling of holding it — picking it up, embosoming it, carrying it — he can't remember a thing.

He doesn't know if the cover was stiff or foldable, red or blue, new or used. He doesn't know if he ever printed his name in the front flap (although, if he did, he suspects it would be in his possession at the present time). He isn't sure of any titles or headings or even instructions that were in it. All he knows, without a doubt, is that somewhere on one of the pages is a sentence in the pliable, dulcet hand of Lily Evans Potter.

The soft flames of the fireplace stain his eyes with the color of her jovial, springy hair. It encroaches on his personal tenebrosity. If he wasn't so drawn to the hue, he would have put the kindling out by now to sit in a room of completely encased shadow.

He casts a dull, sullen glare as the cloying light turns even his darkest robes bright red. As if in spite, he pretends it doesn't.

Severus recalls now, as he's avoiding the quiet conflagration before him, that Lily wasn't the only person that wrote in that sad old textbook.

In fact, he realizes as he furrows his brow, Lily wrote in it the least.

And all of a sudden, he finds himself on his feet.

He wrote in that book. He scribbled all over it. There wasn't a single clean page.

Anyone who finds or has found that textbook must know that it isn't just any old book up for grabs. Each page is corrected, each recipe modified, every footnote added to, every empty space filled with spells he's constructed on his own. Spells for attack, defense, for travel and altering space, for transforming objects and breaking them and fixing them and...

...finding them.

"I am..." he laughs humorlessly to himself as he begins pacing the room, "...mindless past extenuation."

Of course he doesn't have the exigency to use Accio. It isn't required in his case. He has stand-ins; replacements that can tailor and transmute this entire process. And, although it's just as vague, he has a conjuration of his own that can locate lost things. One that brings them to their place or brings their place to it.

And, luckily enough, he remembers exactly what it is.

It's a simple spell; one he doesn't have to know contercurses or cures for. One he can so easily roll off of his tongue. A trick that doesn't take too much effort or concentration or, as far as he knows, intent. One he hasn't used in years.

Slipping his wand into his grip, Snape thinks of his book as vividly as he can, even though it's more of a loose idea than anything. Looping the tip of his wand in the air, he barely speaks as he hexes it.

His voice reverberates in the claggy, eclipsed room. It echoes back to him, setting layers upon velvety layers of himself over his aural vision until all he can register is the presence of his own self. The word takes up the entirety of his consciousness; the whole of his incessant functioning.

"Delocaponum."

The proclamation lands in silence. Because it isn't a loud spell; he's made an effort to only produce quiet ones. This gives room for a healthy dose of theatrics that can't be reached with tumultuous explosions and searing light. It allows freedom to appreciate the soft art of summoning something without glorifying the immediate disturbances it can enkindle.

Like an electric scientist anticipating the awakening of an old Victorian corpse, he stands reticently as he waits for something to happen. 

And, with a soft thud behind him, something does.

His heartbeat slips on its schedule, falling behind on the downbeats it historically holds. Turning around, he knows for certain he's expecting far too much. Having the book right away is improbable at best. However, having any lost object at all will only serve as validation that finding and obtaining this book is something that can be done.

As he faces the noise, he halts in alienated puzzlement at the sight.

What he views before him isn't something he's seen or owned before. It isn't anything that's been lost, though he's certain that whomever it belongs to incontestably considers it as such now that it's out of place and on his desk.

The object in question is a small glass pyramid, translucent and red, petite enough to fit fully on one's own thumb. It looks almost as if it's a decorative part to something. Some sort of pendant or crafted item, perhaps. Regardless, it's not the book, but he frankly has no idea what else he was expecting.

He takes the glass structure from his desk and sets it down on one of his bare shelves. He begins to wonder why exactly it is that this thing, of all possible items, is the one that happened to appear while he's been looking for something else entirely. He watches it. He analyzes its smooth edges. His mind runs from room to room in his head of hypotheses, cavorting from possibility to possibility until he can't choose one to focus on at all.

Why doesn't it work?

He stops; corrects himself.

Why doesn't this work in the way I want it to?

Perhaps he's doing it wrong, or doesn't comprehend it quite unerringly. Maybe there's a step or concept that he's forgotten.

What is it that I'm missing? 

He gives himself a sarcastic snort. The book, he thinks. His gaze leaves the object on the shelf and he turns around, facing the room.

The fire has begun to ebb back into darkness. The red is no longer as vibrant. Feeling as if it's his own onus to keep it breathing, he rushes back to the fireplace and grabs some more kindling from next to him. Cutting the thin rope tied around the nearest bundle, he slows slightly as he hears the soft creak of a door hinge, aware for an inconvenienced moment that he is no longer entirely alone.

He feels a dodgy presence enter the room. He can cognize it standing near the doorway without direction nor purpose. But he pays no regard to it, sticking a slice of desiccated, splintered wood into the flames and, squatting secludedly in front of it, watching the color finally start to come back to life.

"Severus," he hears, not turning to greet the voice. "How's the... sorting going?"

"Fine, Remus," Snape replies robotically, lying. His bottles aren't even near being all put back on the shelves. But that's in a completely different room. Lupin doesn't have to know. In fact, he won't know. Not if Snape can help it. He doesn't need any more assistance involving messy handwriting and small talk and mindless cordial conversing.

The door whines against its own frame again. Severus closes his eyes in discontent, the warmth from the fire melting his already unhappy features into hotter, boiling versions of themselves. He doesn't want people here. Alas, here they are.

He tries to tune them out. Tries to prosper by himself for one miracle of a fleeting second. He pushes his attention back to the glass pyramid and the unfruitful spell and the book. He can feel his guests awaiting him. He lets them wait.

There must be some way he can perfect his tactics. He could try wand motion, but what movement would he do? What purpose would it serve? Because the problem isn't in the technicalities of his actions; it seems to be in the incantation itself. And this is strange, especially due to the fact that it worked fine when he created it.

There's a throat clearing not belonging to either him nor Lupin, and Snape finally sighs and gives in.

"What's this?" he drones, standing up and turning briskly around to meet the sight of Dumbledore and McGonagall standing patiently next to Remus against the dungeon brick wall. A piece of wood from the fire falls out of the flames due to improper placement, and Severus finds out quickly that he's missing anything to fix it with, agitatedly scraping through all the nearby items to see if there's any sort of metal stick around.

"We'd just like to welcome you to Hogwarts," McGonagall elucidates blithely, her hands joined professionally in front of her in a sort of cupped fashion. She likes to think that Snape might be paying attention and furthermore giving a damn about what she's presenting, but she knows this is nowhere near the case. "Specifically, we've talked it over and have decided that it would be best for the common good to welcome you into the plan for the Order as well."

She phrases it this way because it was absolutely not her idea to let him in, and this conversation wouldn't even be happening if not for Dumbledore's nimble wheedling. She isn't the fondest of Snape. He, in turn, isn't the fondest of her. They understand one another in this way; one of the few things they have in common.

Snape, now on the opposite side of the room as he digs through the few objects that Slughorn managed to leave, takes a preoccupied, overwhelmed breath. "What?"

"Something wrong?" Lupin asks from his leaning posture abutting the wall. He knows the answer, of course, but Severus takes the prompt notwithstanding.

"Have any of you come across..." he begins, searching in a corner next to one of his shelves. "I've been looking for a... thing. A book." Although it doesn't seem to be made for the purpose of which he's intending to use it, he does find an extensive wooden stick, carrying it back to the fire and using it to maneuver the log back in. "It'd be a... spare, most likely."

"It'll show up," Albus says quickly, sticking his hands in his pockets. "Did you hear what we said?"

"About what?" Snape asks blankly, throwing another quarter-chopped log in. Remus rolls his eyes and gives a sigh of slight exasperation.

"The Order," Albus reiterates softly, though the underlying tone is stern. Severus knots his brow at the fire.

"The order from whom to do what?"

Lupin flings his hands into the air, irately looking daggers at the ceiling. "Bloody hell. Can you stop rummaging and pay attention?" he stipulates tersely. McGonagall shoots him a warning look, urging him to calm his damned temper as she turns to Severus and speaks again.

"We're here to invite you to join us, Severus," she says respectfully. "To join the Order of the Phoenix."

Snape stands back up, facing them all for the longest amount of undivided time thus far. His face alleviates in subtle shock. "...Oh."

Dumbledore tips his head. "You're surprised," he observes, as if he didn't outright predict this.

"I'm not sure why," Remus mutters sideways to him. "I invited him three days ago and told him to think about it. He's had roughly seventy-two hours for the startle to wear off. I even gave him my card."

Snape, tossing more wood into the flames, turns dramatically back to face him, his robes swishing airily around his legs. "Unfortunately, your card is so unnoticeable that it's quite easily lost in robe pockets, and then so completely unmemorable that it's furthermore forgotten immediately once out of sight," he exonerates, tossing the long wooden stick over to the wall and letting it hit the brick with a hollow-sounding knock.

Remus, now seeming to have a renewed quipping stance about him, turns to the others with a subtle chortle. "I rather like my cards."

Dumbledore smirks in slight mirth at the statement, but decides to say nothing with the intent of leaving this conversation alive and well. McGonagall, however, raises a brow, tightening her lips and rejecting amusement. 

"Severus, we're asking you to join us," she reports shortly. "That is all."

She turns, walking stiffly out of the door. Albus follows quietly, and then Remus, who points friendlily at Snape as he leaves the doorway.

"Hope you find your book," he says colloquially. "Couldn't have gone too far."

He pulls the door shut behind him, causing a wave of air to push the spurting flames a bit to the left before retroceding back to their urbane, upright stance again. Snape is left to watch them swallow the air, Lupin's affirmation incurvating feverishly in the core of his cochleae, resounding over and over in his ears until it's all he can hear.

Couldn't have gone too far.

He replays the sentence. It comforts him. It soothes his vaulting apprehension. Because it really couldn't have gotten far. That's beyond question. Wholly apodictic.

Or... is it?

The façade of easefulness the sentence gives washes out into a thick wall of nausea. Because maybe that isn't true.

Severus comes quickly to terms with the fact that the book could be anywhere. It's laughable to think that he can cement the assumption that it's nearby; there's no way of knowing forsooth. It's possible that a student has taken it home. Someone could have stolen it to memorize his spell adaptations. Or the book could be in a used bookshop, or in the hands of someone intending to pass it off as their own. Slughorn could have it. Alumni could have it. 

Anyone could have it.

Anyone under the sun.

Energy depleted, he sits on the floor and leans against his empty desk, staring wearily at the wall. His eyes close, his breath heavier than usual, his chest itself made of lead and steel.

He realizes for a moment of voiceless, tight despondency that he might have no choice other than to start letting Lily Potter go.

The resignedness steams its way up from his stomach into his throat. It stings his nose, jabbing at his lungs as he tries to swallow it down. But he can't, really. There's too much of it. It's too dense to ignore. 

And, all at once, he's completely overtaken.

His lips quiver. Everything quivers. His lungs, his heart, his vision, his ribs vacillate as he lets it all in.

And, in natural consequence, he lets it all out.

A small whimper decamps his throat, mist creeping into his eyes. His breath shakes. 

With a small sob, he covers his face with his palms, flattening himself as far into the desk as he can. His spine screams with the pressure. He barely notices a thing.

Sinking into his own robes, he curls his knees to his chest in lost desperation. He doesn't want to let go. He doesn't want things to change.

He doesn't want to forget her, or accept the fact that he might. He owes it to Lily to grieve for the rest of his life. To walk by a flower and be reminded of ones they used to lay on. To be vaguely reminded of her smell. To listen to a room full of talking people and swearing for certain that he can hear her voice.

He promises himself through his own weeping that he will. Forever. Always.

Eyes squeezed shut, robes inundated with his own tears, he sits there for what seems like millennia. He becomes the air around him, dark and lost and unmoving, and all he's aware of for the longest time is the soft red light from the flames ploddingly dying out, and the memory of Lily leaving gently with it.


	5. 𝙸𝚅   >>   𝙰 𝚆𝙰𝚁𝙼 𝚄𝙽𝚆𝙴𝙻𝙲𝙾𝙼𝙴

< 1 WEEK, 1 DAY >

Throughout his entire life, Severus Snape has only ever apologized twice.

He learned at a young age that it was often best not to, predominantly in the environment he lived in. Because apologizing only secures the notion in place that you've done wrong and you're fully aware of it, giving any perpetrator further drive and reason for punishment and discipline and devastating castigation. And, when you get beaten for doing wrong things, you learn to avoid the phrase as a survival mechanism. Escapism, naturally, has become a strong suit of his. In any given climate, it's common nature to adapt. This is merely his personal take on transmutation.

On various occasions as a child, he'd take refuge in the cupboard under the bathroom sink. He'd cross his legs and close the small door behind him, leaning as far back into the corner as possible and moving various cleaning supplies in front of him, just in case it was tenable at all that they would help dissemble his figure from view. He'd sit there and cover his ears with his small, breakable hands as his father vociferated out and his mother screamed back. Spasmodically, something would whack thunderously against the wall or something in the kitchen would shatter, and his mother would scream again, or she wouldn't, and then things would be quiet for a long time.

Then booming footsteps would rumble through the floor, causing Severus to shrivel back in terror and quiver uncontrollably as the cupboard door was thrown open and he was yelled at and dragged out of the closet by the neck of his sweater and thrown onto the hard tile floor with a deafening crack and he'd be kicked and smacked and beat and beat and beat until all he could hear was an unrelenting, never-ending, excruciatingly eternal—

Thud.

Thud.

Thud.

Thud.

Snape wakes up against his desk.

His limbs weak with the trauma of resting on the hard floor and his back aching with the discomfort of nine hours sleeping upright against furnishings, he sweeps his hair out of his eyes and turns to give a squinting glimpse at his door.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

Grabbing the edge of his desk, he prises himself to his feet and lopes unyieldingly to the door, his shoulder feeling almost too irritated to open it. But it gives easily, oscillating agape to show Albus Dumbledore standing uncomplainingly outside.

"Good morning," Albus nods amicably. "My apologies for waking you."

My apologies.

My mistake.

I'm sorry.

Severus blinks the flash of his father opening the cupboard away from his eyes. He pretends he doesn't hear himself screaming the words: I'm sorry. He tells himself he doesn't feel his steel-toed boot on his cheek.

Come here, boy. You'll know what sorry really feels like—

"I thought you might be up already," Dumbledore subsists. "We have some things to discuss, you know, considering your, um, employment."

Severus steps to the side, allowing leeway for him to step in. His eye twitches. He still feels his father's leather belt.

I'm sorry! I'm sorry. Please—

He shakes the evocation away, impelling the echoes out of his skull. Albus is pacing slowly around the room now, eyeing the empty shelves, reputedly collating them with how they appeared when full.

"You're fully aware, I'm sure," Albus mentions, "that you should be reviewing the syllabus."

Snape, pausing in place, gives him a vacant look.

"Horace left a binder of his curriculum somewhere," Dumbledore goes on. "Did you not see it?"

Severus, still just as lost, turns out his hands, referring with his gaze to the void room. "Genuinely nothing is in here."

Albus furrows his brow. "Or the potions room?"

This is confirmed as Snape's expression doesn't change. Dumbledore, who looks visibly disoriented, idles his gaze on the time-beaten floorboards and clinches that this isn't the end of the world. In fact, it's far from it. It's the beginning of a new one, at least. To him, everything is sublime and safe and placid. To him, there is nothing to fear and nothing to grieve. He's won a war. A boy has lived. 

Snape wishes he could have this strength. He wishes he could possess the surging blood sprinting through the longevous veins of Albus Dumbledore; to feel the weight of absolute weightlessness — invigorating, interminable light — lifting him up by the shoulders, freeing him, until the end of time and consequently the end of him.

But this, as of now, is unattainable. It seems he will never be nescient of foul affairs. The vitriolic grief for Lily, for his childhood, for his dignity, for love, will hit him between the shoulders time and time again, just when he least predicts the requirement to fortify his back and straighten his spine. How he even still has a spine, how his state of misfortune hasn't killed him yet, is beyond his own discernment.

But, then again, being alive enough to know the pain can be the misfortune in and of itself.

Dumbledore nods, his eyes still trailing along the empty shelves. "I'll... have to check my library," he settles, his fingers reaching out and besoming some dust off the shelves' aged veneer. "By the way, I've organized an assembly in the dining hall later today. I'd like you to be introduced, so I ask that you make it."

Snape's posture coagulates. His eyes jump from shelf to shelf as he gives a reluctant, stilted nod. "Hm."

"I know you've never been one for audiences," Albus reasons, "but, with all the change going on around us, we might as well be upfront and direct about it to the children so nothing becomes, for a lack of better wording, discombobulated."

Severus purses his lips. "Is it mandatory that I sit at the front table?" he asks laconically, his words inky and calculated and entirely arid.

Dumbledore lends an altruistic smirk. "In the retired seat of Slughorn, yes," he corroborates. "However, if it makes you feel any better, you don't have to stand up."

As a matter of connate course, Severus quickly finds himself seated disinterestedly next to Minerva McGonagall within a few hours' time, leaning back and staring blankly down the unending tables and their infinite number of seated children, most of them staring straight at him before turning off to whisper at their little acquaintances. Albus stands up front at the podium, talking about things like schedule rearrangements and textbook orders that only apply to a minuscule group of students present, leaving Snape to wonder how McGonagall has never yet suggested he cut right to the chase and get things over with.

"In other news," Dumbledore says with a change of subject, "many of you have heard about something new and exciting that's recently happened upon us."

Severus recognizes a few students at the tables. They're a lot older now, but he's well conversant with the ones who were studying three years ago during his last semester. These students in particular are perfervidly looking up at him sitting there, making him anxiously turn his head and focus on the floor, avoiding all sorts of attention as best he can.

"I'm sure you're all aware of Harry Potter," Albus says, leading the room to call out in enthusiasm. Snape sighs emptily as Dumbledore waves his hand for silence. For a moment, he thinks he might feel an empathetic nudge on the shoulder from Minerva, but he pays no mind to it, staring blankly ahead and urging for his most recent recollection of the aforementioned boy to not seep its way back into his unfocused vision.

"I'd like you to know," Dumbledore continues, "that the boy has been relocated and is now safe and protected in the home of his close family, where he will be kept alive and well until he joins us in ten years' time."

As animated whispers congest the room again, Severus spots Rubeus Hagrid in the corner, beaming proudly at the report. He bites the inside of his cheek, hoping the man hasn't yet happened upon his newly-fragmented windowframe. He keeps his head facing forward, leering at him out of the corner of his eye to get any sort of gauge on his state of affairs. He repudiates turning his head. He won't let any sort of suspicious suggestion be unconcealed if he can help it.

"I hope you all know that you're witnessing an incredible monument in the garden of history," Albus states, looking over every table with fond ease. "This is a time of hope and solace for us all, life be allowing. So hold your heads high today. Remember that this journey of ours, although difficult, is temporary. Evil will ebb. Loving and caring for one another will let us all prevail."

Snape scoffs at the cheese. Albus hears this, turning around with a quota of revelation suggesting he's forgotten that Severus has even been here at all yet.

"Oh, yes!" he calls lightly. "There's another change you may have noticed."

He beckons him to the stand, overtly forgetful of the promise he made that procured Severus to even come to this godforsaken assembly in the first place. Snape tenses, giving him an indefinite shake of the head only to accrue another motioned invitation in return.

So, hesitantly, he pushes himself up from the table, his fingers trailing against the aged cedar as he feels the watchful scrutiny of hundreds of students adhering itself to his very essence. Stepping quietly to the front, he shakes Albus' hand, who gives him a fond pat on the shoulder and speaks quietly into his ear.

"Are you feeling alright?" he asks quietly. "You look like you're remembering things again."

Snape, already fragile enough in front of all this limelight, disregards the question. "You told me I wouldn't have to stand up."

Now it's Dumbledore's turn to ignore the statement. Clearing his throat and turning to the room, he motions to Severus with an open hand and begins to speak again.

"As you all know, Professor Slughorn has resigned from his post," he announces. "For the past week, you've gone without his class entirely. But, beginning very soon, the curriculum will be taken over and furthermore directed by Professor Severus Snape."

"Snivellus!" a student whoops delinquently from the back of the room. This is followed by a wave of quiet titters from the rest of the table as Albus stares blankly in the direction of the perpetrator.

"Looks like that survived through the last battle, hm?" he mutters, and Snape scoffs in receipt.

"If only I'd bided a few years before showing up, none of them would have heard the appellation at all," he replies dryly, giving the specific table a sharp stare. Albus takes a breath, tipping his head unobjectionably to the podium.

"Why don't you introduce yourself?" he offers, though it sounds more like a general exhortation than anything else. Severus gives him a look, which he turns away from as he sweeps him and his histrionically flowing robes to the front.

Snape, with all the inner equanimity of Macbeth on his death day, feels his feet plant themselves on the platform and his ribs quiver in disturbance.

"I, um..." he begins, rather out of sorts as he looks over the forest of children ahead of him. "I really have nothing to present you with, given the fact that I was never informed of being required to give an acceptance speech." He casts a sideways glance at Dumbledore, whose expression tightens as he turns forward with a look of forced pleasantry. 

"Does anyone have a question for Professor Snape?" he prompts mildly, and calls on a raised hand. "Yes, Ambrosia?"

A young girl from the Hufflepuff table lowers her hand. "Where, exactly, is Slughorn?" she asks, and Snape is sensationally eager to reply.

"Being the noble man he is, he ran away—"

"We... don't know," Dumbledore interjects, pushing Severus off the podium again as the students erupt in quelled giggles. "Go sit down, Severus."

Sit down, boy.

The connection to his memories is made all too quickly.

His father would seize him by the shoulder so pugnaciously that bruises would loom even days later on his malnourished, jutting clavicle. He'd hurl him rigidly against any proximate chair, slapping him against the cheek as he landed back against it.

I can't wait for you to go back to that bloody useless school.

And here he is now, seated once again next to McGonagall in the exact place he'd be ridiculed for attending, and then ridiculed for not. He deems it ironic, that. And, though he's standardly one to hold such organic satire in amused esteem, this isn't his most winsome observation.

"...and, because of this, we are unable to currently locate and thenceforth communicate with Horace Slughorn at the given time. I do hope this answers your question, Miss Fane," Dumbledore says, his voice fading back into Snape's cognizance as he becomes additionally seized of current materiality.

"So are we never getting Slughorn back?" a young Slytherin boy blurts out, causing a wave of interested eyes to rest up front.

Albus turns to glance shortly at Severus, pausing in consideration before turning back.

"I believe you and Professor Snape," he lands on with the hopeless objective of fooling them all with his glorious expertise in evasiveness, "will get along just fine for quite a while. Isn't that right, Severus?" he asks, to which Snape, resting his temple on two extended fingers, gives a vacant raise of the brow and a forced nod. He's barely heard the question.

"Severus?" McGonagall whispers lightly, turning to get a good look at him. "Are you feeling well?"

He says nothing. He remains silent because he isn't going to say that no, he isn't. He's going to shut up and cope with circumstances on his own. He's fully adept, after all. Completely competent.

Stop crying, you chit. Be a man. 

He feels his fingernails digging into the side of his head. He ignores it. His heel taps, incentivized, conflicted, hare-quick, on the floor. He can almost smell his father's cologne.

Don't burden me with how much that chair hurts when you're the one who asked to be thrown into it.

"Severus?" McGonagall asks again, nudging him softly in the arm. Her expression indurates into concern as she watches him, coolly petrified, sitting like a work of Michelangelo and refusing to move; to hear.

"Severus." 

It's a word so far away. The tapping on his shoulder doesn't belong to him. Feeling doesn't belong to him. He doesn't belong to him. It's all static fuzz. Nothing is quite there. Nothing is quite gone. He exists—

"Severus."

—somewhere, constantly, unapologetically—

"Severus."

—vaguely in-between.

"Severus!"

Snape later finds himself surging down the hall straightway after the assembly is dismissed, his footsteps parting the rout of nearby children out of his way before he has to even verbally request it. He seethes at the thin air itself. 

"Severus Snape!"

Why is it that he has to remember his father today? Is it because he recently snuck into his parents' storage room to grab an ingredient? Is it because opening the door to the basement opened the door to the inside of his head, and it's all spilling out with no means of closing shut again? Is it because he saw the edges that made him bleed? Because he may have passed a photo of his mother, completely happy, long before she ever met the man, sitting discarded on the washroom tile?

He carelessly opens a doorway in a side hall, rushing down a staircase two shallow steps at once. He's mortally aware of Minerva chasing tensely behind.

"Snape! If you don't stop—"

If anything, he should be remembering Lily today. He should weep for her still. At least her memories are good ones. At least all the pain she's caused is related directly and only to her death.

He finally reaches his office, throwing open the door and beginning to boil once he sees one of his least favorite people standing inside. Minerva follows him in, her face red with what seems to be frenzied frustration.

"Out of my office," Snape commands. "You, Remus, are not exempt."

McGonagall sets her jaw. "Have you heard anything I said?"

"You haven't said much," Snape replies dryly, opening one of his drawers, yet not knowing why.

Lupin, who stands informally in the corner, furrows his brow. "What in Merlin's name have I missed?" 

"Just five minutes," Severus breathes. He takes a feather pen out from the drawer too make it look like he maintains a reason for having opened it, tossing it airily onto his desk and slamming the drawer shut again. "Five minutes to think, and then we can talk."

Minerva is unmoving, her glare sharp on him. "Why are you so out of sorts?" she demands quietly; a slick, prodding whisper. Snape closes his eyes and grits his teeth against themselves.

"Five bleeding minutes!" he bids, pointing harshly at the door. Remus, at this point, is already outside, dodging students as they walk past to their respective classrooms. Minerva straightens up, taking a long breath in and fixing her gaze directly into the center of Snape's entire being.

"I don't think you're stable enough for this position," she remarks, too softly to be benign, before diverting her direction and heading out the door. Severus reaches out and shuts it behind her, turning back around and swallowing whatever it is that's tightening in his throat.

He sits on the floor.

Curling his arms around his legs and hugging them to his chest, he stares blankly at the wall, his focus assigning itself immediately to the look of the unrough, venerable brick. Each one is stacked immaculately, centered just over the dividing line between the two below it, perfectly uniform, meticulously balanced. Evenness is found in these walls. Evenness that he envies.

It's cool and damp in here, the chilly air enveloping him in a stolid habitat of absolute tranquility. He lets his head fight itself as he sits in it. He lets the sides battle out and run their course until they've defeated one another, the noise and the smells and the sights of his father slowly echoing out and becoming nothing at all.

His footsteps are louder than he's ever heard them before as he walks to his door again. The echoes of his hollow paces on the stone floor are more noticeable now that there's no other noise in the way. Grabbing his door handle, he yanks it open, not bothering to look out.

"Remus," he decides aloud, his voice low and flat now; back to the old normal, "you may come in."

Lupin, pushing off the wall upon hearing his name, steps laboriously inside, receiving the immediate and quite expected reaction:

"Why are you here? What do you want?"

He slips his hands into his pockets. "I... came to get something from Dumbledore." 

Snape is still as he stands, his back turned toward him as he stares into the empty, dark fireplace. "Then why aren't you with him?" he asks lowly, grabbing some unlit wood and setting it gently inside. Lupin looks at the floor.

"Because I came to ask you about the Order," he replies.

So much talk of the Order. It's beginning to drive him mad. "Isn't Albus in that field of management?" Snape asks, pointing his wand erroneously at the fireplace and setting the kindling ablaze. "Is it at all possible that you could just let it be so that, if absolutely necessary, he could just ask me?"

"And you don't think he'd forget to do such things immediately after I requested them?" Remus replies with a sarcastic, quick sniff. "Anyway, please come to our next meeting, Severus. I know the group is technically disbanded, but we need a backup plan set up completely before going back to our normal lives."

Snape turns slowly around, noticing with some stupefaction that Lupin appears rather worn out. "Why is it so terribly... important to you..." he says, giving him a long look, "...that... I do?"

Remus returns the inspection as well, the two of them sharing a silent mutuality in the fact that neither of them are in the best of mental states. "Because you know things none of us do. You're useful," he replies. He rocks back on his heels then. "By the way, are you... Are you alright? I... You were... When you came in... I mean, just now... I thought... If...?"

Severus hardens his expression. "I'm doing well, thank you," he reports shortly, hoping his eyes don't give away the arresting lie.

Remus raises a brow. "I see that," he replies, as if his voice is stuck in his throat. Snape bites the inside of his cheek.

"Good."

Lupin nods. "Good."

They say nothing then, the fire warming the room and drying the condensation on the damp stone floor. It bespeaks itself on the young, softened edges of Lupin's nose, phosphorescent and comfortingly heavy. Snape, who finds it odd to have noticed anything so particular as someone's nose, directs his regard to the door.

"Is that old hag still waiting to maim me outside?" he asks. Lupin shakes his head, clicking his tongue with palliation at the change of subject.

"No, she left when you invited me back in," he replies. "She's got a blasted class to teach. You don't expect her to babysit you through your tantrums, do you?"

Severus folds his hands together, looking away from the fire and meeting Remus' eyes with a stare of dull distaste. "Why are you... constantly here?" he asks with a slow breath.

"Potions," Remus replies helpfully. So helpfully, in fact, that he doesn't actually answer the question at all.

"I'm quite sure that's why... I'm here," Snape retorts. "I don't see what gives you the purpose to so habitually enter a school at which you do not attend nor work, solely because you have the vague need to speak to the headmaster and bother his new little professor about your club that you want him to, presumably, spy for next time predestined massacre is on the horizon. Is there anything, Remus, that I'm verily missing?" He tips his head as he waits for a response.

Lupin looks at the ceiling, pursing his lips and giving a nod. "I, uh..." He nods again. "I'm out of my... I mean, James used to provide me with my Wolfsbane, so I clearly am in need of some ingredients." He gives a pointed look, referring to his monthly transformation under the full moon. Snape whirls around and moves over to his desk, where he leans with two hands as he stares him down.

"Are you nearing your cycle, Remus?" he asks tauntingly. "Is it almost that time of the month again?"

"Haven't heard that one before," Lupin mutters as Severus unfastens another drawer and shuffles through it.

"Slughorn didn't leave too much behind, but he did forget to bring with him an aggregation of first aid for things that mainstream hexes don't bother to cover," he replies, opening a box and grabbing something out of it. "Ah."

Jaunting himself back over to Remus, he discards a wrapper into his palm. Lupin sighs as he recognizes it. "Inconsolable weeping Christ."

"Tampon," Severus states. Remus, closing his fist around it, is unamused. "I've been told that you have to put it farther back than you'd think." Up yours, he adds subvocally, though his face communicates the tagline rather eloquently.

"My most... sincere gratitude," Lupin expresses back, goaded as he turns and heads for the door. "All this aside, I'm assuming that you're stable enough for me to leave without being worried about general mortal destruction or any unfavorable whereabouts."

"Goodbye, Lupin," Snape disregards, watching him leave the room and pull the door harshly shut behind him. But it opens again, much to his dismay, and a presumptive head deposits itself back into the room.

"This, of course," Remus continues, stuffing the tampon into his pocket as Severus rushes around his desk with the intent of securing the door shut himself, "covers all the bases. Suicide, homicide, genocide, arson—"

"Enjoy menstruating, Remus," Snape barks, pushing the door to no avail as Lupin shoves the toe of his shoe under it.

"—infanticide, assassination, terrorism," he continues coolly, his eyes beginning to glint with his usual lighthearted soul again, "fascism, treason, mail theft, abduction, getting into weed, trying those mushrooms we relabeled the other day, getting high and vandalizing the front door of the school, unexpected pregnancies..."

"Out of the two of us, Mr. Uterus, you should be the one worrying about surprise children," Snape grunts as he shoves the door again. "Kindly remove your foot."

Remus mocks a gasp. "Are you suggesting that I get around?"

Severus sets his jaw. "I'm suggesting that you get your foot out of the door before someone has to come get the door out of your foot." He pauses. "But also, yes, I think you're probably a slut. Have a nice evening."

He slams the door, pushing Remus into the hallway and fastening the lock, leaning back against it with an exasperated breath as he regathers his sanity.

James used to provide me with my Wolfsbane, so I clearly am in need of some ingredients, Lupin had explained, and Severus — though he doesn't know why — finds absorption in reprising the statement in his head.

James Potter and Peter Pettigrew are both dead. Sirius Black is locked up in Azkaban. And good riddance. Snape isn't the only one who gave away information about the boy. He's not the only one responsible for Lily's death. He couldn't care less if Sirius was hung upside down by the ankles in solitude until he took his last breath.

But Remus Lupin, like himself, has lost his main connections, regardless of how dirty they were. Just a week ago, both of their sources of friendship deteriorated with the people that kept them. It takes Snape a few moments to realize that Lupin's tired expressions, his short span of patience, the bags under his eyes, and his preoccupation of coming here all the time and telling himself he has a purpose doing it, are likely directly attributed to his own personal grief.

He also realizes, with a dramatic shove back up onto his feet, that he himself has the ingredients for Wolfsbane that Albus Dumbledore does not.

Severus isn't sure why, but he opens his door again. Racing out into the corridor, he follows Lupin's trail as he catches up with him, turning a corner into a new hall and spotting him strolling down at the very end.

"Remus!" he calls, ignoring the river of students flooding around them. Lupin turns and looks back at him, clearly somewhat displeased that they must continue their conversation. But, hesitantly, he walks back to where Severus stands at the corner, his gaze a bit more stressed than usual.

"Come to add another joke to your plethora of werewolf-related taunts?" he asks flatly, which Snape ignores.

"Albus is not equipped whatsoever with the objects of which you are in need," he says. "The ingredients are too costly for something he doesn't personally make use of."

Remus' expression does not change.

"In addition," Severus continues, "Wolfsbane Potion is grievously difficult to recreate without poisoning oneself and, given your success in your potions classes a few years back, I would not put so much trust in yourself to make it on your own."

"What are you suggesting?" Remus asks. "I've already gotten my foot out of your door. Is there anything else?"

Severus pauses, an alarm going off in his head as he comes to terms with the fact that he's genuinely volunteering to assist someone. Someone that he previously was certain he unforgivably disliked. The pellets of confusion hit him in the stomach as he contemplates this, watching Lupin stare him tonelessly down.

Snape speaks, the offer quiet and unsure as he does. He's so alike this man, in terms, of course, of grief and grief alone; this is the least he should do.

"Return to my office as soon as is reasonable," he says, and, before Remus can even think about declining, he's rushed back in the direction of his door, his robes flowing theatrically behind.


	6. 𝚅   >>  𝙰 𝚅𝙸𝙰𝙻 𝙽𝙾𝚃 𝙾𝙵 𝙲𝙾𝙽𝙲𝙴𝚁𝙽

< 1 WEEK, 6 DAYS >

A stack of parchment is slammed on one of the classroom worktables. The entire worktop shakes, dust disseminating around it and descending restfully on the sturdy stone flooring.

"I can't find his curriculum anywhere."

The echo of the room has recently decreased somewhat, likely since the tables have been moved and the shelves have been filled with correctly-labeled and alphabetically-positioned vials again. Empty space has been filled with compositional plants; corners have been dusted and stocked with ancillary vacant bottles. It looks nothing like how Slughorn had it, deeming the room a derisive success.

"I imagine he likely has it by some sort of unrepresentative misadventure, celebrating somewhere in his hideout with it tucked carelessly under his arm like a little Victorian paper boy, no doubt," Severus scoffs, continuing his caviling. "Cowardly, him. Always thought it."

Albus, who sits at the chair opposite him and observes his setting up, thinks back a bit. "I thought you liked him," he cues, his watch following all the supplies as they're frivolously laid out. Severus gives him a look of cynicism.

"He liked me, Albus; An unfortunate bond."

Dumbledore discounts this as Snape moves to the following table, setting another stack of parchment in the center again. "I'm sure you'll be fine, Severus," he inspirits him soporifically, the triangular tip of his long blue hat dangling over his forehead. "I know what I was thinking when I decided to hire you, and my opinions haven't changed. You are fully capable."

A snort. As if this is even a question.

"Well, of course I'm fully capable," Snape replies with a dripping undertone of mordacity. "I'm not craving your ardent moral support, Albus. I have no need for... senseless reassurance."

"So what do you need, Severus?" Dumbledore asks equably. He fiddles with one of the jars in front of him. "Do you want to talk about Lily again? I know you're still..."

He's met with a stiff, guarded glare. He changes the subject.

"Well, if you aren't sure about what to teach today, just..." He tosses his hands around, sending somewhat of a subpoena for any available ideas. "Teach them some random potions. Loosen up. Or have them read a passage from their textbooks. The school board and I could not care less."

"Last I checked, it was more than clear that you, quite frankly, are the school board," Severus remarks in return. "But how is it that I'll know which potions to pick for them? With all your... brilliant ideas, I'd hope you would have thought this far when you decided that potions classes would resume today."

Albus clicks his tongue. "What?"

Severus leans over the next table, espying him straight in the eye and hoping that it's at all feasible to make any sort of coherent decision with this man. "How do I know what to teach them if nowhere does it say what they already know?"

In the plenteous quiet that settles between them now, Albus very apparently experiences a moment of abrupt enlightenment, cocking his head and tapping his first finger on the table.

"...Ah," he says detachedly, and, without another word, he stands up and leaves the room.

"Don't—" Snape begins in exhortation, but Dumbledore is already gone, leaving the space void of anyone or anything else other than the occasional footsteps of a stray student.

Giving a thwarted breath, he whirls around and drops the parchment back on his shelf with a deafening whack, pacing quickly to the other side of the room and collecting the pens that he brought in from his office. He tosses them bitterly at the tables, gritting his teeth in despondency at the fact that he's had to be reminded of Lily today, again, by another external source.

The blood within him beats a navy blue, pulsing its dark fluidity through him so apace that it feels as though his veins might erode and burst themselves. He shuts his memories out. Now is not the time. Never is the time, of course, especially not when he has an agenda; something to do, people to prattle to. A class, presumably, to teach.

A class. Today.

He knows he won't manage this well. Even introducing himself is something he dreads, knowing that he uses such a small amount of large words rather than many small ones, causing any sort of introduction to be painfully awkward to endure on either end of the projection.

But he has to do it. As Dumbledore put it so pleasantly earlier, "We're out of time. The Ministry will be just about ready to flip us into the sea if they find out we haven't actually been teaching students potions for a month," to which Snape added something too witty for his own good about defeating the purpose of education completely — this, of course, causing Dumbledore to give a light shrug and move on, his footing still firm in the fact that his classes have to start, and they have to start now.

So here he stands, devising for something he's completely unequipped for; quailing from the thought of even his opening line.

It'll be a wreck, he assures himself, passing his last few materials around to the remaining spots on the worktables. It'll be absolute hell.

And so it is.

"Hello, students," Severus finds himself preconizing later, distributing ink and Slughorn's golden pens, not axiomatically because they'll be used, but because he wants to preoccupy himself with something dramatic and important-looking so as not to seem awkward in front of the crowd. "You will have no assignments today, but I do ask one thing of you all. I would like to know where exactly it is that you are in terms of your potions proficiency."

As the room sits silently, Severus raises a brow and decides to add some incentive. "If you tell me," he explains, "we can move on in a way that lets you learn and grow. However, if you fail to make this information available, I will simply opine that you know nothing and commence from the very basics as you wallow in the eternal misery of knowing you could have so easily skipped ahead." He makes eye contact with every student as he cons the expanse of the room, marveling over the observation that they all so quickly look away.

"Did Slughorn tell you nothing?" a student asks from his position at a table behind him. Snape stands up, grabbing another bunch of ink jars to allot to the other seats. 

"I haven't spoken to him since nineteen seventy-eight," he replies metallically. "I was surprised to be told that he was even still alive at all."

"He kept track of everything in his books," offered another. "Did you check the cupboard?"

Snape scoffs. "'Did I check the cupboard?' Obviously I checked the cupboard. I've checked the halls and corners of this entire execrated establishment. He must have taken them with him." He reroutes back to his previous leitmotif, aiming to get some sort of point across this time. "Now, I expect you all to shut your eager, puny mouths and answer my-"

"Just go to his house then."

Snape whirls around to see a young girl — the same one that catechized about Slughorn at the assembly — sitting as far back in her seat as possible without falling over. He scrutinizes her vacant expression as he tourneys it with his own, hoping she doesn't like the tension.

"I would, Miss Fane, but I am presently unaware as to where the hell he lives," he articulates forebodingly. "Once again, be quiet—" He turns and gives a long look to the rest of the room as well. "—and one person may tell me the last thing you've learned."

"I know where he went."

Severus turns slowly to the other end of the room, his brow loosening at the statement. "Who said that?"

A student waves her hand in casual greeting. "Afton Zygphil. I know where he went."

Snape steps slowly over to where she's seated, trying to spot the colors under her black robe. Staring her down, he doesn't alter his state of moral ambiguity. "What... did I just say, twice, about keeping your mouths shut?" he asks slowly, and Afton raises a brow.

"I thought youd like to know—"

"Silence," Snape interjects, cutting her off and whisking around to hurry go the opposite side of the room. "Ten points from... whatever house you're in."

"Oh, and I bet that sounds nice and fair to you, does it?" Afton retorts, hiding her colored sweater further beneath her robes. Although it's too late at this point; Snape has already spotted a quick flash of blue.

"Also, detention," he adds, summoning giggles from a few of the surrounding children. Afton turns out her palms in complete disbelief as he calmly addresses the rest of the room.

"I understand," he reports, "that Professor Slughorn gave you all tremendous leeway in your misbehavior, but you must all grasp the fact that I am not your previous professor, and that I'd prefer—" He casts a glance at a few students in particular. "—if I only had to ask a simple question... once."

The room falls silent. Previous arms, doodling and tossing pens at one another, fall still. Eyes turn upward, and it's calm.

"Now," Severus asks in complacency, poising his fingers together and pacing between tables. "Can anyone tell me what you've learned?"

A hand is raised, and he points to it. "Preface your reply with your name."

"Bo Adler," says the boy in front of him. "What's that potion behind you that you're making?" He directs his pointer finger in the way of the shelves, suggesting a steeping jar full of light blue liquid. Snape sets his jaw and disregards the question.

"Does anyone have any actual information they can provide me with," he diverts, "or am I going to have to revert to teaching you every single species of plant and animal and their uses for the rest of the year?"

"Is it Wolfsbane?" Bo asks again before lowering his voice. "Are you a werewolf?"

"If Dumbledore ever hires a werewolf, consider him mad," Snape replies bitterly. "Shut up."

But it is Wolfsbane Potion, as a matter of fact, which he's been surveilling and concocting now for almost a week in a hesitant engagement with Remus Lupin. Remus Lupin, whom he has for some godforsaken reason decided to make it for.

Remus had followed him on the ruinous day, his feet cunctatory as they moved to his classroom, watching Severus point to a table and dig through his newly-organized shelves.

"Sit," Snape had instructed, his words succinct and low as he grabbed a few jars from their hidden position near the back. Remus did as he was told, resting on one of the old stools and setting his forearms on the surface of the table.

"You don't have to do this," he said insistingly, running his middle finger along the grains in the wood, noticing that they'd been dusted since his last visit to the room.

Snape snatched a vial from another shelf, slamming all the ingredients into the table and sitting opposite from him. Taking some sort of plant and letting fall a section of it into the empty glass container, he gave Lupin a questioning glance.

"If you were to ask Dumbledore for all this, Remus, he would have just sent you back to me anyway. It saves both of us a trip. A physical one for you; a mental one for me."

Severus poured some sort of murky liquid into the concoction as Remus watched with an overstrung expression. "Besides," he added, "since you're always around this hell of a building, the least I can do is prevent my students from being mauled every time the moon decides to show off."

"Ah, so you want control over the situation, now, do you?" Lupin smoked, although his theory was marginally spot-on. Snape glanced darkly in his direction as he swirled the vial around, lighting a flame beneath it and watching as it began to steam.

"Look, Severus," Remus admitted, his bright eyes following the thin blueish smoke as it rose to the ceiling, "I can't afford to buy this from you every month."

"Obviously," Snape replied, purposefully eluding from the point. Remus sat forward, biting the inside of his lip in moral obligation.

"Let me do something in compensation. Anything," he asseverated. "Let me help you with tasks or devoirs. Let me assist your classes."

"I don't need help," Severus replied, his gaze lit wildly as he watched the vial like a mad alchemist, which he sort of was. Lupin raised a brow.

"Oh," he scoffed. "Clearly."

The liquid in the vial began to froth. Snape killed the flame beneath it, crushing a few herbs in a larger jar as it cooled. 

"Tell me, Lupin, could your help possibly provide me with something of which I cannot provide myself?" Severus asked casually, taking one vanilla bean and slicing it open with a scalpel. Remus only entailed a few seconds before coming up with a quick reply.

"Companionship," he replied. "Support. Contact. Things that, since the thirty-first, we've both been lacking quite severely. And don't avoid the fact that I said that, because I know you want to."

Snape rested a guarded gaze on him from across the refurbished table. "I'm picky with connections, Remus," he reminded him.

"I didn't forget," Lupin replied. "But maybe it's time for us both to be a bit less picky, hm? It'd be mutually beneficial to support one another. I know you have a wall up, and I know you use it to guard all your little... gargoyles—" He wiggled his fingers playfully at the air— "that have seeped their way into your hollow old chest, but you can't keep feeding them without letting anyone else in to provide assistance when you need it."

Severus looked back at his jar in avoidance, pouring the liquid from the vial into the powdered plants as he scraped the inside of the vanilla bean into the concoction itself. He stirred briskly with a small wooden stick much resembling the ones his father would once mix his coffee with, and Remus watched as his expression remained outwardly unfazed, unbeknownst to his throat twisting uncomfortably in disapproval. He was supposed to be the one here who provided the melodramatic metaphors and passive-aggressive arguments. Lupin, as far as he was solicitous, was only in this room now so he wouldn't have to be in it later. 

Snape was adamant about this thought to himself, almost as if he needed to be reminded of it. Not that he did. He'd not forget such a thing. He had a history with Remus, and not the best one. He urged himself not to let it go.

"Maybe the problem here, Remus, is that you don't have a wall in the least," Severus replied, removing the stirring stick and setting it on the table as he folded his hands and met Lupin's stare. "You seem to let anyone in without a second thought. You feel too much for people you know nothing about."

Remus shook his head. "Maybe you don't feel enough," he retorted.

"Perhaps," Snape countered, "neither of us are a decent example of how to exist functionally and are rather two separate sides of the same coin, and we should both stop talking and focus on the issue at hand."

Remus was, at this point, visibly agitated as he broke eye contact and looked down at his own hands. "We wouldn't have even pivoted off the subject if not for you defending your own unfeeling honor," he accused forthrightly.

Snape tipped his head in cynicism. "As if you didn't have the full capacity to divert the subject back."

Remus threw his hands into the air. "Alright," he said, keeping his voice, although strained, as sedated as possible. "On our original note, then, let me help you."

His tone was sincere as he fell mute again, his gaze dropping itself gently on Snape's own. Severus studied it, almost unaware of how long he was looking back into the blue and hazel and extant amber, perceiving for a fleeting moment that he knew all there was to understand about this man. But he caught himself; glanced away. Avoided.

"On our original note," Severus contradicted again, confusedly forcing himself back into the comfort of his own criticism, "I don't need your help."

Lupin pursed his lips, plagued by inner contradiction as he stared down at the jar in Severus' sturdy hands, watching him swirl it around in circular kinesics and turn it a significantly darker shade of blue. "Then I can't take it," he replied weakly. His fingers flattened themselves against the table. Severus sighed.

"Yes, you can," he disagreed bluntly. "Your fingers work; your hands are functioning."

"I can't let you do this for me," Remus insisted, stifled and almost whiny, leaning forward in what seemed to be desperation as Snape looked austerely back. "I'm not close to you. I'm not of any importance to this place. I don't even have any current attachment to the school."

Severus placed a cork into the top of the bottle, gently pushing it in and sliding the potion over to Remus' side of the table. "And yet," he said, tying a handwritten label around the neck of it with a string, "here you are."

Lupin said nothing, two sides of him gnashing at one another as he looked complicatedly at the potion in front of him.

"You have a strong moral compass, Remus," Severus said, almost as if in praise, "but please destroy the tentative little magnet inside of it. It's polluting the directions. I have no use for this liquid, and here it sits in front of you as I ask you to take it for the safety of our students and the sake of my occupation. If you leave this with me, I'll have nothing to do other than let it go to waste or essentially force it down your unwilling throat."

Remus, torn, furrowed his brow as he stood up, his fist hitting once against the table as he pushed in his stool and took a breath.

"I'm sorry," he replied, and it sounded like he sorely was. "I can't be so beholden without returning any indulgences. I really, really can't."

And so he exited, his tall figure indistinct as he pulled open the heavy wooden door and wavered in its way, his hands in his pockets as he looked sideways inside. Snape momentarily met his eyes again, frozen and wildered where he stood, wondering if it was at all possible to change his mind. But before he could think of any sentence at all, it was too late. Remus Lupin, in all his overdone respect, had left the building. And his bottle, bubbling slightly as the steam began to suffocate, still sat on the dark tabletop, lush and blue and completely alone. With a grimace, Severus grabbed it and set it carelessly on the nearest shelf.

It's strange to see someone act so differently than how you would. It's so philosophically alienating to watch another person react to something in a matter of which you find completely absurd. Merely knowing that someone like Remus Lupin burdens himself so relentlessly with what's good and what's fair beyond reason could stumble any logically-minded person into complete crisis upon thinking too much about how much of the general population functions this way.

And it's odd that Lupin has such a connection to morals now, considering, in all respect, his past. 

He didn't used to be this way. He used to watch things happen. Let bruises form and blood hit dirt, mixing and mixing until it became dark red mud. He used to allow things to outdistance his very essence. He used to be too passive, too cowardly to take a stand in the face of brutality, to set any wrongs right.

Perhaps he regrets his past, and that's why he's the way he is now. It may be so perchance, of course, that the reason he's so dead-set on being respectful of Severus now is because he's hurt him before. 

And so maybe this is why he left the Wolfsbane on the table, and why it sits now on the shelf behind Snape to be ogled at by a room full of unknowing Hogwarts students that are too clever for their own good.

Snape stands now, ignoring the fact the jar even exists as it rests, untouched and unbothered, on the shelf, with no one to pick it up and no one to drink it. A waste of a bottle. A prodigality of effort. An insolent attempt at saving time.

"This vial," Severus announces to the room, "is not of your concern. Now, if none of you are in the decent mood to tell me anything at all, take out your books and prepare to read aloud."

"Read aloud from where?" Ambrosia Fane asks, her eyes lit with genuine interest soon to be completely pulverized. "What page?"

Snape leans forward, his teeth bared as he hisses the answer back.

"Page one," comes his sly demand, his teeth bared together as he instates it. Standing back up again and observing rows of students discover what it exactly is that sits on the first page in sooth, his amusement feeds itself on their mixed expressions. A guilty pleasure of his, establishing inconvenience when one has set him off, like the revenge he never received as a child.

"But, Professor," a young Slytherin boy interjects, "that's the table of contents."

"Then I suggest you get reading if you're intending to get to chapter one by the end of the year," Snape replies scorchingly, and the boy's jaw appears to fully drop.

"But that doesn't even teach us anything. It's not even review."

"Will you shut up, Gorbyn?" a boy from across the room demands. "You should read the first page yourself if you're so into the idea of digging us all into a deeper hole."

Snape stands up tall, lifting his brow in sidedness at the statement and staring down at Gorbyn in consideration. "Hm, yes," he adds. "Exactly what he said. Page one. I expect you can read."

Gorbyn frowns and grudgingly looks down at the book.

"Table of contents," he says. "Appendix — page four. Chapter one: Introduction to Morphing-Purposed Potions..."

Stopping abruptly, he holds his head in his hands and groans. 

"What's it now?" a girl wails from the back of the room. "Little Gorbyn Grozny can't finish a sentence?" Her eyes challenge him domineeringly from her seat near the cold wall, prodding him to go back to his assigned page.

"Chapter one begins," Gorbyn whines again, "on page fifty-nine."

Snape smirks in amusement at the collective sighs from the class, taking his wand out from beneath his robes. "Indeed it does, Grozny," he replies, sticking the tip on the page. "For the sake of your little friends, don't grow so weak as to falter; continue on."

Gorbyn twists his face into disgust. "I can tell you what we last learned. It was about Polyjuice."

"I'm afraid you're about nine interruptions too late, Grozny; Continue. On." Snape persists. "Additionally, I hope that Horace never put as much trust in you all to actually brew such a potion. The fallacious amount of fluxweed or the incorrect order between that and leeches can wind you up in the hospital wing, vegetating for a few gruelling weeks before falling into a slow and incurable death."

Gorbyn gives him a petrified visage, his mouth turning down anxiously at the edges as he looks back at the page. "Chapter two: Morphing-Related Ingredients in the Natural World — page seventy-one..."

They manage to get one-fourth of the way through the appendix before the end of the period, when Snape ushers them all out the door and hurries to his desk. He sits, writing notes to keep track of class progress, bearing in mind that his year four class on day one has made absolutely none.

He sets his pen down. He has roughly ten minutes before the next class presents itself noisily outside his door. Ten minutes to be productive in any way he can.

Ten minutes to continue his search for that bloody book.

Clearing his mind, he stands up, closing his eyes and trying to imagine the book as best he can. He guesses at its attributes. Its color, weight, its textures, even, he makes up based on what is most likely to be true. So he imagines a hardcover, a bit on the heavier side, dark and old, with a deep red spine. It's a wonted design, of course, so he clutches the thought as tightly as possible.

Raising his wand, he takes a breath, trying once more at a spell he knows nothing about other than the fact that he wrote it. His lips quiver. He's anxious. He's not sure why.

"Delocaponum."

He hears something solid drop onto his desk. Not solid enough to be a book, but solid enough to be something.

Opening his eyes, he looks down in front of him.

It's a picture frame. It's empty, with one small pane of glass concatenated to its back by four metal clips. He picks it up; examines it. It's a simple frame. Small, unused, but clean. Like it hasn't been forgotten about.

But it's not his.

So why did it come to him? Why is it here, in this room, when he called for something else?

There must be some order to it all. Something he's not performing correctly. He thinks this every time he contemplates the spell itself, but this time puzzles him more.

This object isn't like the previous. This one is something that may genuinely be missed by whomever had it last. He furrows his brow. The point of this spell is to undo misplacement; not to cause it.

He hears rustling and chatting outside his door. His ten minutes must be up.

Setting the picture frame on his next empty shelf, he reminds himself to take it back to his quarters when his classes are over. And this doesn't happen, of course. It never makes it back to his office. It stays in the classroom, collecting dust that it never did when it sat at whatever place it came from. So as Afton Zygphil drags herself into the room for detention after the last period is complete, the frame sits still in its spot, unused, forgotten.

"Have a seat, Zygphil," Snape drones as she walks in, scribbling one last thing into his notes as she collapses on a stool at a near table.

"What do you even want me to do here?" Afton queries, setting her books on the spot next to her as Snape looks up from his work.

"What is it that you typically do in detention?"

Afton crosses her arms, resting her elbows on the worktop. "I don't know," she bites back. "I haven't received detention before."

"A miracle," Severus replies.

"What about you?" Afton challenges. "What did you do in detention? Don't forget that my first year here was your last; the whole school was painfully aware of your drama. You got into trouble. You were good at that."

"Not trouble that translated to detentions, no," Snape counters. "I had the foresight to build decent connections with my professors so that they never gave punishment a single thought." He gives her a pointed, intentional look.

Afton tips her head. "Luckily for you, your professors were easy to please."

"Speaking of which," Snape diverts, "you said earlier that you have knowledge regarding where Slughorn resides." He scuffles through his own papers, cross-referencing another before making a new note.

Afton's jaw sets. "Is this why you gave me detention?"

"I could easily give you more for talking back," Severus threatens, though they both savvy it's an empty oath. Afton opens one of her books and takes out an envelope, tearing off the address at the upperhand corner and walking across the room to set it on his desk. She places it just out of reach so that he has to stand to grab it, tightening her mouth in repressed assuagement at the gesture.

"He wrote me a letter once over the summer," she explains. "This was the address attached. He was so closed-off to the rest of the staff that I'm not even sure Dumbledore knows where he lives. This is my best guess."

Severus closes his hand quickly around the paper, slipping it into one of his pockets and nodding at the door. "Return to your commons. You're dismissed."

Afton scoffs, closing her books again and carrying them in her left arm as she opens the door to leave. Glaring slightly at him as she turns, she doesn't hesitate to speak her mind.

"You play a strange game, Snape," she hisses. "Someday, you'll have to decide on improving it. Some of us — those who are smart enough not to respect you — aren't interested in playing."

Severus gives her a dry look. "Strange, isn't it, that the only people who find me untrustworthy and undeserving of respect are those that have no idea who it is that I am and rather trust their own initial biases instead of using reason?"

"Strange, isn't it," Afton retorts, "that the people who respect you are the same people to which you show respect in the first place?"

Severus bites back a defensive correction, watching Afton Zygphil turn and grab the door behind her, leaving the room.

"Have a nice night," she spits at him on her way out, and the door kicks shut with a muffled slam.

Snape glares at it, as if it's at all possible for this to help anything. His fist tightens, his teeth bolting maniacally against themselves as he begins to pace the room.

He has Slughorn's address.

The idea that Horace Slughorn is even at his own home currently is too hopeful in his eyes, but at least it's a start. Because if he isn't there, his books might be.

Gathering all his things and heading to his office, Snape gathers that it wasn't a terrible first day. Not everyone seems to hate him, at least, and he doesn't hate everyone, either.

His office is cold as he steps inside. Alighting the end of his wand for visibility, he stocks the fireplace with kindling and sets a flame under it, heading over to the rickety bed that Slughorn left him. He sits on the edge, staring exhaustedly at the wall. The flames, as they become brighter, redden the dark stone, casting shadows off their dips and edges, softening with the flickering of the fire itself.

He's reminded again of Lily.

He doesn't feel the same tightening in his throat this time, however. It's more of a punch to the gut, throbbing only intramurally, never making it up to his eyes. His face stays dry. His breath no longer wavers at her memory.

He wonders if it's normal to forget.

He wonders if Lily would mind if he did.

Flopping onto his back, arms outstretched, he gazes up at the ceiling, one of his feet swinging gently as it dangles off the side of the bed. He focuses on his own heartbeat, noticing its alacrity and regularity, letting it occupy his entire head with its rushing, swirling rhythm. Pointing his wand at the ceiling, he tries his broken spell one last time.

"Delocaponum."

A small object falls onto his chest from above. It hits him softly as it lands, loose and fluid as his fingers move to pick it up.

Dangling it over his eyes, he examines it. It's some sort of ankle bracelet, consisting of what looks like teeth or claws in a circle of woven leather and woolen thread. It's old and weathered, the edges of the yarn itself worn beyond belief.

He sets it on the table next to him, figuring that he'll discover soon why his own spell is malfunctioning in this way. He'll remember something, or make a mistake that ends up working in his favor. All he needs is some practice. Trial and error. Like science — the science of finding a lost memory.

The fireplace eventually begins to warm the room. As the cold fades away, his consciousness ploddingly leaves with it, drifting in and out with the timing of his own breath, finally letting him fall asleep.

It's the first restful night he's had in years.


	7. 𝚅𝙸   >>   𝚃𝙾 𝙳𝙸𝙶 𝚄𝙿 𝙰 𝚂𝙻𝚄𝙶

< 2 WEEKS, 4 DAYS >

His second apology was to Lily Evans.

His heart beat violently as he walked out into the yellow and orange of late October, the leaves seeping into the roots of chasmic reality, churning against one another and metamorphosing the ground to a dark, forgiving red. It was his seventh year. He'd lost her friendship two years before.

She was still just as beautiful, just as unselfish and amiable as she had always been. The dissimilarity was that she no longer laughed with him sitting beside her. She no longer wrote sentences in his book or read him passages of the Muggle books he'd brought from home, and she no longer sprouted him flowers from her palms, and she didn't light up whenever he appeared. No, she was rather downright seceded, her iceberg a pole away from his own, and he knew that if it were possible to push it any farther away, she would.

She sat next to James Potter in the courtyard, curled up on the ground and leaning against his arm. They were smiling at each other, talking subduedly about things Severus couldn't hear. He hated that she was happy there. He hated how she'd fully become what the boy fancied her to. He slunk softly towards them, taking a breath to sturdy his quivering knees, his hand curling into a fist, his heart pulsing thickly in the meat of his thumb.

As if she knew he was coming, as if she were every god and every universe and every knowing thought, Lily stopped talking, pulling her robes tighter around her chilly arms as Severus stepped up behind them, falling completely silent and staring out at absolutely nothing. Snape felt a barrier lock its way around her, momentarily stopping him and making him wonder if it would be indecent in such a case to trespass through. Not to say he wasn't a generally indecent person; he just didn't want her to think so.

He put the question on the back-burner. Now wasn't the time for questioning decency; it was the time for debriefing schisms. With a soft step and a hushed breath, he became nearer. He crossed the border she hadn't wanted him to enter. He had to see her. And, as she turned even farther away, he became more and more certain of it, until he was just as assured as the flipping of the leaves themselves that the murky water they were deluged in was never befouled to begin with. He just had to let her know.

"Lily," Severus said. It was soft, gentle. The kind of tone that would typically make her warm up and give anyone the brightest smile in the world. But instead she became unforgivingly rigid, looking darkly down at her black dress shoes and seeming to covet that she wasn't there. Even her hair, though more lambent red than the leaves themselves, seemed to dampen in shade, allaying with her as she ignored him until the entire world was almost completely blue.

James slung a protective arm around her shoulders. It made Snape simmer at his very sutures. As if he was dangerous. As if Potter could save her from it. If he wasn't so composed, Severus' fist would have by now left its sleeve. His knuckles would have planted their roots into the form of James Potter's square jaw, replacing the teeth that rested in it with empty air and the taste of salted, metal blood. But Severus wouldn't do it. He decided he couldn't accede to becoming his own father. 

He ignored the gesture, keeping his focus on Lily and reinstating his purpose. He could tune James out. After the years of provocation from the boy, he knew for certain he was quite good at this already.

"I wish to speak to you."

His eyes softened as they trailed over the part of Lily's face he could still see — the outline of the ductile, cold-reddened cheek, the lashes of the downward-pointed eye, declining him as blatantly as they could bear — and he could see her think. Yes, as unobstructed as the sun itself, sifting through the outstretched leaves around them, was the inner conflict of Lily Evans as she sat in the dead yellow grass and pondered on what she was to say. 

If she were a typewriter, the owner would deem her out of ink. Wordless, vacant, hollow. But she wasn't a typewriter; an owner was something she was too tenacious to have. She could not be tethered by anything but love itself, while Severus could be bound by absolutely all things including and excluding the matter. He paid attention to this because he envied it with the small expanse of a soul he yet had. He knew the fact too well.

So when Potter's grip on her shoulder tightened, as would a writer's grip on a platen knob, it was dreadfully disappointing as she didn't so much as flinch in repression of the urge to turn away. No; she had been completely turned by him. Disfigured by the mere existence of the boy. She was no longer free. She was bound by love. She was a keytop. She was owned.

Potter's gaze hardened as Snape looked upon him. "You, speak to Lily?" he demurred, his red lips warped into a bitter sort of moue. "After what you've done? I won't allow it. Piss off." His thin fingers grabbed a stick, throwing at him like a little boy. "Get away, you dirty little slime-toad." A few leaves hit Snape's robes. The stick missed. Neither took accountability to noticing.

"Lily, you are apt and autarkic enough to make this decision for yourself," Severus stated passively, rearranging and recalibrating his planned sentences in the backrooms of his conscious thought. Lily took a deep breath in. Unsurely, her limbs hesitant and stiffer than they would be if frozen in this warmth-void air, she stood herself on her feet. She failed to meet his eyes.

"I do not wish to speak with you, Severus," she spoke, her mouth unexpressive, her pink lips conditioned in a limp figure. Her gaze avoided his own. She didn't dare see the damage she was perpetrating. She didn't want the rue that he held so heavily in the cavities of his soul. "But I will."

She cast a sorrowful, apologetic look at Potter, who gave them both a bewildered glare as they took a few steps away. Severus vetted her face, noticing how it'd aged since he last saw her up close, how she'd grown up without him, and he'd grown up without her. So much lost time. Time that only he wept for.

"What is it?" Lily demanded, her voice soft but her intent jagged. Her gaze was weary as it scanned his, her brows tight, her shoulders tense. Severus refrained from aimless dithering. He knew she wouldn't give him time to waste.

"I wanted to say," he began, his nose beginning to grow cold against the light autumn breeze circulating around the two, "that I'm sorry for what I've done to hurt you."

Lily was quiet again, her strong features beginning to turn liquid, blinking quietly as she processed. It was a shock to her, of course. She knew him better than anyone in the world, and she knew that procuring an apology from Severus Snape only ensued if he really meant it. She knew this was the second apology he'd ever given.

She nodded, taking in a short breath in and hoping her emotion wasn't showing through with the intensity of which she felt it.

"Okay," she said, airily and taut, her throat tight as Severus searched her gaze.

"...Okay?"

Lily could only nod, overtaken by whatever it was that had hit her so severely in the chest. She so abruptly wasn't aware of her own thoughts, her own motions and words, and — although she could swear she didn't know why — she effluxed forward and pulled him into a tight hug. She leaned her cheek on his shoulder; gave in to all she was holding herself back from — an embrace two years overdue. Closing her eyes, she tightened her grip around his waist as his hesitant, shocked arms locked around her back. Snape gave a cold stare in Potter's direction, although his chest was warmer than it had ever been.

"Let's talk," Lily said into his shoulder. "I have so much to tell you."

Severus felt his arms wrap tighter around her as reality sunk even deeper into the swamp and muck that he was reminded time and time again that he consisted of. He felt himself smile. It was strange. He hadn't done that in a long time.

"And I," he replied softly, keeping his gaze contently fixed on James Potter's agitated glare, "have much to ask."

It wasn't often that anyone was lucky enough to see the vulnerable side behind the façade of Severus Snape. It was only the serendipitous ones; the people he trusted enough to bestow it upon. Even now, as he grieves the loss and death of such a bright, fiery woman as Lily Potter was, only few may see the softened moss behind his shell of brick. It's a container only he can open; a door only he has the key to.

There's a quick knock from outside, tapping repeatedly into the center of his brain. He's been ignoring it for multiple minutes, but whoever's effectuating the knocking hasn't yet gone away. Due to this fact, he knows exactly who it is, which is precisely why he hasn't opened the door. But it's exacerbating him. Its raps vibrate against the soles of his feet and hit the base of his spine. The frequencies are too direct. He glares at his own door as if to convince it to shut up, but, as it is a door, it does not.

He gives in, mumbling something indecent under his breath as he grabs the handle and turns the lock. He braces himself for the woman awaiting his probable annihilation just outside.

But oddly enough, she hasn't brought a pitchfork. This time, she's brought a tray.

"I brought you coffee," Minerva greets as Snape pulls the door back to see her, two small mugs and some spoons on a wooden base in her palms. She hands him one, watching with a maternal sort of complacency as he takes it. "I didn't know if you were much of a coffee drinker, but I know it's big in the Muggle world. I imagine your father had a taste for it."

Severus steps silently aside, making room for her to enter his office. She sits in the extra chair by the wall, pulling it in front of his desk as he seats himself on the opposite side.

"And I hope you don't mind that I added milk and sugar," McGonagall adds. "Albus told me you liked that in your tea. I wasn't sure..."

Snape gives a dismissive wave of the hand, taking a sip and setting it onto the surface of his desk. "No, this is... aberrantly thoughtful. I tend to appreciate such things." The key phrase is "tend to", of which they're both well aware.

Minerva nods, her lips fitting themselves into a tight, regulated smile. She clears her throat, sampling her own coffee and setting it sturdily in her lap.

"I was going to ask you how your first week went," she prompts, and Snape takes advantage of the ungenerous loophole left in the sentence.

"Then... ask me," he ripostes, raising his brow and watching her contain her alacritous frustration with an air of clandestine amusement. He keeps his cup poised just beneath his chin, the warm scent of coffee completely enveloping him until it seems to make up the contents of his very soul, if not replacing the void that may be there instead. Minerva straightens her posture and tips her head to signal that she doesn't value the reply. Regardless, she bows to it, submitting completely. Whether or not the conversation continues is completely her decision, and she seems to know this very well.

"Well, then," she starts, "how was your first week of teaching?"

Severus is quiet for a bit, lost in thought as he contemplates the question. His first finger taps lightly against the ceramic cup, making a light clay tinging sound that seems to drive Minerva internally mad. He makes certain to keep it going.

"They're not completely hopeless," he offers, referring to the children. "However, I'm starting to see how all of the jars were mislabeled and out of alphabetical alignment when I arrived. The students haven't even slight means of organization. They've taken at least twenty things out and put them into the incorrect bottles in the past five days alone, throwing vials wherever on the shelves they seem to even slightly fit at the mere strike of the hour."

"Oh, I'm well aware," says McGonagall, unbothered as she drinks her coffee and eases the wrinkles out of her deep green robe with a flattened palm. "That's why I applied for Transfiguraion."

"You say this," Severus replies heavily, leaning against the back of his chair and giving Minerva a hebetated look of scrutiny, "as if it was at all my choice to teach Potions in the least."

She ignores the sideways remark and shrugs. "You should talk to Filius if you haven't," she suggests. "I know he's good with classroom behavior management. Every time I pop in, the students are paying attention like cats on the trail of an injured fly." Snape finds this an odd sentence, as it suggests that Filius himself is the fly that the students plan to lacerate, but he passes the commentary aside for the purpose of a more important reply.

"Flitwick still works here, does he?" he remarks, warming his palms around the side of the coffee mug. "I didn't see him at the assembly."

"Well, sometimes he's hard to see, Severus," McGonagall chastises with a hard, stern stare. "That's quite not something we joke around about so flippantly."

Snape returns the look, leaning forward and placing his coffee slowly onto the surface of his desk. "I wasn't joking," he returns formidably, putting his defensive guard up again, although he isn't quite sure why.

Minerva is far too alike him to back down, however. She has a guard of her own, and it sits in the center of her pupils to glare menacingly back. "You concern me, Severus," she states candidly, facing his stubbornness with her own. "You concerned me as a student, and you concern me now as a man. I never expected you'd get hired. I'd never even dreamed of it, in fantasies or in nightmares. It just seemed so impossible to me, with your emotional ambiguity and your senseless association with such hideous things as..." She shakes her head in frustrated wordlessness. Snape, unperturbed by the criticism, helpfully fills in.

"Lord Voldemort."

McGonagall flinches slightly at the term, scowling down at her coffee. "I don't deem you stable," she summarizes. "I don't know if I can trust you to hold this position with full integrity. I have this terrible voice telling me that, one day, when we all need you most, you'll be turned over again."

Snape neutralizes his expression. "The Dark Lord is dead."

Minerva doesn't change a thing about her stance. She stays upright, unmoved, untouchable. The only thing that seems to soften is the last folded wrinkle in her robe, which she pulls taut and resolves under her own grip. "Evil is not," she counters willfully, just as indifferent now to throwing out accusations as she has been all along.

"We are all equally susceptible to darkness, Minerva," Severus replies, cold, although his throat itself he finds hot from the burning coffee. "You should be just as concerned for yourself if Voldemort's army is all you fear."

"On the contrary, I'm far less skeptical of my own self," McGonagall replies. "I have the means of self-regulating. I can tell when I need to be put back in my place."

She doesn't back down; she's too stubborn. It's like looking into a mirror. Severus now begins to see why people find his personality so unfavorable.

"And what is your place?" he challenges back. "Over-monitoring? Micromanaging? Taunting your new employees about their sickening pasts? Not listening to students when they bring you hazardous information because you don't trust the judgment of anyone other than y—"

His door swings open. A first-year student, Daveed Timmres, stands wearily in the frame.

"Um, Professor, sir," he stammers anxiously, casting timid glances at the cozy expanse of the office. "We've been waiting for you in class and, um—"

"Class," McGonagall realizes aloud as Snape realizes it quietly, both of them bolting up and out the door. Daveed trots timorously behind Snape as he hurries to his classroom, seeming to have more to share.

"Professor," he urges, "Bella Letto broke a jar and now her hand is cut, and she said not to come get you because she said you'd give her detention for spilling the knotgrass all over the floor and getting blood on it, but I got you anyway because we're supposed to be—"

He cuts himself off as they reach the classroom and Snape throws open the door, ushering Daveed inside and following sinisterly after him.

"Three points to Hufflepuff, Timmres," he announces, wisping his way to the front of the classroom, where Bella Letto is clutching a deep cut in her palm, blood overbrimming along her fingers and onto the floor. The red liquid stains the very edge of her green sleeve.

"I can bring her to the hospital wing," suggests another student, but Snape motions for everyone to sit down, retrieving his wand from his pocket and poising it over her hand.

"Show me the wound."

Bella quivers her lip as she takes her other hand off, exposing a deep red gash in her right palm. The class collectively laments in revolt, but Snape looks down at it with a feeling of complete indifference. 

"It would be more efficient," he decides, "to solve the problem here, in this room. Watch me carefully."

Circling the tip of his wand in counterclockwise circles around the lesion, he utters a spell that, so far, only he knows; one that's also from his lost book.

"Viccisus lacera."

And it is, in every sense, like clockwork. A glow of warm light encircles Bella's hand, swirling around it as the events of the wound undo themselves. A large piece of glass lifts itself off the floor, trailing backwards through the laceration until the entire motion is reversed, leaving her hand completely unhurt and the jar itself back intact.

A student raises her hand, not bothering to be called on before speaking. "But, Professor, that one isn't in the books. Flitwick hasn't even mentioned it in Charms."

"No, it isn't in the books. There is nobody outside of this room that is even slightly aware it exists," Severus replies dramatically, directing Bella Letto back to her seat and grasping the bottle that was previously broken. "You may use it in the future to heal any laceration immediately by means of pinpointed time reversal. The timeline of the wound itself will fold — if any of you have a Muggle in your family, they may coin the term as usage of the fifth and sixth dimensions — but the timeline of your own reality will remain the same."

All the eyes of the room fall on him for quite possibly the first occasion so far. He makes a note to remember it. Whatever he's done, it's reached their attention. It's reeled them in and locked them on shore.

"Can I try?" another boy asks eagerly, nearly jumping out of his seat. Snape gives an expressionless look back.

"Unless you'd like to severely injure yourself and go through excruciating pain just to test it out," he replies sarcastically, "no."

He's greeted by a heavy, chagrined silence. Lifting a brow, he tips his head in cogitation. He watches the eyes that watch him. He makes a small connection. He acts on it.

"But you may write it down."

The students scramble for their pens, getting it down as quickly as they can before he moves on to the most salient affair he wants them to take away from the lesson. Taking another long look at the misplaced jars, he purses his lips in irritation and motions to them with a limp hand.

"Good thing we're already on the subject of handling bottles," he begins with a casual change of subject, "because all of these have been entirely disorganized. From now on, I will be distributing and recollecting the ingredients until you lot know how to put them back respectably. Is that inherently clear?"

They reply with a wave of nods and assuring hums, so Snape moves on, setting the jar in its correct place and diverting the focus again.

"Also," he speaks, pacing slowly around the tables, "I'd like to be informed of which textbooks you are all using. I'm looking for a specific title and can't quite pinpoint what it is."

"I've got Beginner's Potion Training, Volume One," offers Tully Steedrop, holding up a small textbook with a green spine. 

"Let me see the cover," Snape replies, glancing over the red drawing of a flask on the front. He shakes his head. It's not it.

"Intermediate Potions for Students in Magical Alchemy, Volume Three," suggests the next class, which, once again, isn't what he's looking for. It doesn't give him any inclination of forgotten items. It barely interests the recollection he has.

"Intermediate Concoctions," Gorbyn Grozny states, holding up a black textbook without a drawing at all.

The next classes result in no betterment, although this is scarcely a consternation in the least. "Potions for Proficients, Set One—"

"Brews and Stews for Student Wizardry—"

"Blurtsworth's Ultimate Spellbook for Liquids—"

"The New Advanced Potion-Crafter's Manual—"

Pause.

Snape stops. Turns.

Something about that title rings a bell; rigs some faint, vacant wisp of an alarm in the back of his subconscious memory.

"By whom?" he asks slowly, skeptically, slinking over to examine the cover. Doro Clovensilk from Year Seven holds it up, even the illustrations on the front tugging at slight remembrance.

"Melina Drodskin," Clovensilk replies, flipping to the first page. "Printed in nineteen eighty."

Snape sighs, giving it a long look. "Not... entirely," he decides. But it's close. He knows it. It's unbearably akin. "Have there been any discontinued previous editions?"

"We had a different potions book last year, but they switched the curriculum," says Ada Lumiespe, who sits a table away. "I think the author was Libatius Borage."

Libatius Borage. That's a name Snape remembers, and he knows it for sure. His pulse hastening in his chest, the heart itself wholly prepared to escape its own cage, he writes down the name on a piece of torn parchment.

"Lumiespe. Five points to...?"

"Gryffindor," Ada replies, turning the neck of her robe out to reveal a deep red fabric.

"Oh, for the godforsaken love of life itself," Snape mutters before adding, "Make it four. Class dismissed."

They hesitate none. The students shuffle out excitedly, heading directly to the courtyard to spend the rest of the hour in the crisp November air. Snape follows them out of the potions room with the same amount of excitement, although this one is determined, nervous, harsh, and his direction is pointed at the library. It beats down on his shoulders like hail as he heads off to his destination, slipping the name of Libatius Borage into his pocket.

Overtaking the courtyard as he goes, he catches glimpses of the red and yellow of the falling leaves, watching students laugh as they throw bundles of them at one another, their fingers rigid in the cold.

He remembers. The years turn counter. Professor Snape as he exists is now three years forward in time. Three years back, Year Seven, is now. It consumes him, bringing him to a different timeline as he rushes to look for books. He dwells in what was, so much so that what was becomes what is.

Nineteen seventy-eight. November. Lily walked next to him on that day. She wore a soft smile, eyes of relief, a stance of safety. In just a few minutes, she told Severus Snape everything he needed to know; everything that, over the span of time, he'd completely missed. He harked intently, knowing this was something he could pay attention to for the rest of time. Talking to Lily would never bore him. He wished it to continue forever.

But they stopped when they'd reached the next side of the courtyard. Lily moved a bit of hair behind her ear, leaning against the old stone wall and looking down at her feet.

Snape leaned against it as well, focusing straight ahead at the people spread out among the grass. He was beginning to grow cold. He considered going inside, but he had one more question. Just one more thing to cover.

"Are you going to marry him?" he asked emotionlessly, grabbing a stick from the ground and snapping its small, subdivided offshoots piece by piece. He threw the smaller sticks at the ground, watching them hit the leaves, hearing them land on the cold, packed earth.

Lily put up her guard again, giving a hard shrug. "Why do you care?" she asked, and Severus tossed another stick.

"Just as I don't want to become my father," he stated, snapping off another twig, "I don't want you to become my mother."

The fire in Lily's hair lit her eyes as she glanced over, disembarking her attention on the tip of Severus' nose, the only thing that his hair wasn't besmearing from her sideways view. "Why is it your concern what I become?"

A gust of wind frothed through their surroundings, taking leaves and grass with it as it swirled between their feet and waltzed with their robes. Severus remained unmoving, unconvinced of whatever agenda Lily was putting up for debate against his own.

"Because I'll have to be on the sidelines watching you do it," he replied, tossing another stick and watching it catch in the wind. Lily crossed her arms, and not particularly because of the temperature.

"Well, if it makes any difference to you, which it won't because your will is so bloody stubborn," she argued, "I won't be your mother. I love James, and he loves me, and that isn't going to change."

Snape hurled the next stick with an underhand swoop, this one more irritatedly powerful than the last few throws. "Everything is going to change," he spat at the breeze that took it. "Everything changes all the time and we can't stop it. We may not even live to see the turn of the century and you're telling me it's set in stone that everything is always going to go as planned? That the course of the very universe revolves around your schedule? That you'll have this perfect life with James Potter? You've seen his dark side. How are you not wary of that shadow?"

Not much silence was given after he closed his mouth. Lily didn't let herself soak the assumption in. She didn't often like to process realities she didn't want to hear.

"I'm too light for shade to ever hit me," she replied. "You've told me yourself. The only thing that could possibly kill me in such a way is a light that's even brighter. Or one of those things from the Muggle books that eat light. Black holes in the depths of the universe. Vacuums, the presence of nothing. To a simple shadow I am unable to wither."

Ironic how things turn out, Snape remarks to himself as he searches through the library looking for the authors beginning with B. Fascinating that she died in a blinding light, but equally fascinating how the light itself was shone by the darkest thing reality has yet seen. A black hole in and of itself.

He grabs a book and studies its spine, shoving it back in soon after. It's not often one is killed by something that is simultaneously each of their complete opposite weaknesses. The Dark Lord Voldemort was both. And so the Lily withered, and not even the unhelpful arm of James Potter could prevent it from happening. Severus scoffs. He moves to the next shelf.

Babilla, Baflin, Banvetta, Baram; Beallard, Beerings, Beffy. He doesn't skip a single name. He can't risk missing a book out-of-place. His finger trails along each spine as he sweeps by to read them all. Bhon; Biencer, Bik, Bilmrud, Bimmi, Biu; Blant, Blumrozspin; Bocit—

"Why, Severus," a voice greets him from behind. "Your students told me you'd gone this way."

"Greetings, Albus," Snape replies indifferently, suddenly sidetracked as he finds an author named Dopskiln in the B section and returns it with an inconvenienced breath, now having forgotten his spot in the progress of the B shelf. "I hope you haven't come to ridicule my teaching methods, or my mental state like Minerva so kindly did this morning."

"Quite the opposite, Severus," Dumbledore replies. "I was going to thank you for being kind enough to let them come out and enjoy the weather."

"That wasn't the intent," Snape explains, starting back over at Beerings. "What is it that you're getting at?"

"There's a meeting," Albus explains, "to plan for any emergency rebranding of The Order—"

"Order of the Phoenix, yes," Severus interrupts. "And I take it I'm expected for some reason to attend."

"It seems important to Remus to see you enter his home. I believe he's made some sort of wager with Minerva regarding it." Dumbledore chuckles. "What a young thing he is."

"Is this why he's been indoctrinating me into attending for the past three weeks?" Snape sneers at the books. "How charming."

"You express sarcasm, Severus," Albus presents, "although, if I were in your cloak, I'd offer the sentence genuinely. Lupin is, indeed, a charming young man. His jokes on you are his personal translation of respect."

Snape replies with a tormented sigh. "In such a case, I'd suggest for him to work on his transliteration. The man is insufferable." He reorders another assemblage of manuals.

"Pleasant or not," Albus urges as Severus continues to rearrange titles in perfectionist obsession, "it would be best for you to join us. The knowledge we can gain from you regarding the loveless wizards of the world is of incredible value. Please attend by my side tonight."

Snape turns, closing his eyes for a brief moment as he recollects his thoughts.

"Fine," he decides at long last, stepping down from the small ladder he's been using and tucking it under its worktable. "But there's something that you must wait for me to bring."

They leave the school just ten minutes subsequent, Albus leading the way out the entrance as Severus tucks a bottle safely under his robes to protect it from any extreme weather changes. Albus stands still as he waits for him, watching as he finally looks up.

"Put your hand on my shoulder," he instructs, and Snape does as told. His fingers tightening around the top joint of Dumbledore's arm, he grabs on tightly as he closes his eyes and is quickly transported somewhere else. Apparation is a sensation of which he has yet to get used to, but it's over just as soon as it's begun.

His feet land on a cobblestone street. It reminds him of the one he grew up on as he gets a good look at it, but this one is nicer, less poor, the small cottages huddled along the avenue bearing fresh paint and glass windows intact. Though nostalgically similar, it's much unlike Spinner's End. It's comprised of individual homes instead of bargainous connected ones. The colors have variety. It's all lighter.

Albus leads them both down the dusk-thick street, the blue clouds above casting the cold color onto the entire town beneath it, hinting at a storm. Small lights outside each door are turned on, streetlamps lit on corners, yellow against the gray and navy that blankets them.

"This green one here," Albus directs, walking up to a small picket fence and opening the white, impractically-fragile front gate. Snape follows him into the yard, stepping over a few gardening tools and unearthed plants as they make their way to the fore-end door. Severus notices with what feels almost like annoyance that Remus Lupin very apparently likes to decorate. Every window has a window box beneath, every box itself lush with flowers and ivy. Even the small front porch is laden with hanging plants and potted hostas, the presence of relentless, thriving life something impossible to get away from.

Dumbledore knocks on the door.

"Minerva should be here already," he says, almost as if to pass the time. "She told him we'd be a bit late. I'm sure he'll answer any moment."

But it's McGonagall herself that pushes the door open, ushering them quickly inside.

"Get in. Quickly," she directs. "It's going to rain. Remus is coming, so give him a moment; he's got tea to look after."

There's muffled, ambient music playing from a turntable in the corner, seeming to somehow warm the room as it goes. Snape recognizes it from his father's own collection; it's Muggle music. Bruce Springsteen, if he remembers correctly. The album Born To Run.

Dumbledore lets himself in, heading towards the front room and seating himself across from McGonagall on a dark green sofa, cushioned by a red pillow as he leans back and listens to her chattering away with Hagrid about something likely trivial. Elphias Doge, someone Snape only recognizes from the paper, sits in the corner, occasionally butting in to say something equally as unhelpful.

Severus remains by the door, watching outside the window and deciding not to mingle with anyone present. He likes watching the sky. It's the best communication this room has to offer. Surrounded by yellow light, looking out the window into blue. Unshortened contentment.

There's a rustling in the doorless passageway to the kitchen. The host makes himself visible as he joins the group.

"I've got tea," Remus Lupin announces as he lopes into the room with a tray and a kettle, handing everyone a mug and temporarily breaking up the conversation. "Thank you all for coming, by the way..." He trails off as he notices Severus standing quietly in the corner.

"Minerva," he adds in a hushed tone, bending down to her eye level and tipping his head in Snape's direction, "you'll have to pay up, hm? Looks like you've underestimated someone's level of willingness."

McGonagall chuckles as Lupin gives her a fun pat on the shoulder, though her tone is infected with wanted ferity. Remus grabs another cup, quietly approaching Snape as the conversation behind them starts up again. He stands stilly next to him, handing over the cup, which is filed with a warm, milky brown tea.

"Dumbledore said you like your tea this way," he explains sheepishly. Severus takes it, wondering ambivalently if Albus has been going around and telling everyone about how he liked that one cup of tea that one time, as if it's some sort of major news headline. He sips it, suddenly not minding that everyone seems to know he likes it this way as its soothing flavor washes down his throat. They both look out the darkening window.

"Muggle music," Severus observes as She's the One fades distantly out into Meeting Across the River. "Is this what you've let yourself stoop to, Remus?"

Lupin shrugs repentantly, his hand moving to push his thin white curtain out of the way of his window view. "It's a nice album," he says in excuse, and Snape, for the first time in a while, doesn't feel the deeply-rooted instinct to disaccord.

"...I know."

Remus turns to him with a vague look, clearly unsure about how to feel regarding this reply, but he says nothing. Neither of them do, deciding that silence is more meaningful than anything noisy at all.

It begins to rain.

Small droplets hit the front window, splashing against the cobblestone street outside. Each droplet becomes enraptured by the glow of the streetlights, falling gently as if in a waltz with nature itself, contrasting against the dry, light living room, wherein the conversation around the coffee table seeps its way into both of their consciousnesses.

"So we've got... three, four— Mundungus Fletcher's still missing?" asks Elphias, writing a list with one of Lupin's bright red quill pens. Albus nods as Rubeus lifts a finger to add a note.

"And the Longbottoms are still clinically bonkers," he notes almost jovially, "so there's no point countin' any of them anymore."

Elphias scribbles out a few things before glancing around again. "A few new members, though," he observes. "Snape's here, and — oh — a huge thanks to Minerva for finally joining us, hm?"

The small group of members present speak out in agreement as McGonagall smiles proudly in return.

"After the blatant corruption I've seen in the Ministry this year," she replies, "it's really my pleasure, and I mean that wholeheartedly; I assure you."

Elphias goes through his list again, jotting down a few more names of people in the room that Severus doesn't know. "And a few more members stopped in earlier today, which adds eleven..."

"But take away quite a few, too," an older woman reminds him, and McGonagall gives a grave nod in agreement. "The thirty-first left many gone. I mean, there's the Potters, first off. And there's Slughorn, and Pettigrew."

A few names are audibly scratched off the list. Remus, who stares blankly out at the rain, stiffens. "Black," he speaks impliably at the window. "You're forgetting Sirius Black."

"Sirius Black," mutters Elphias Doge casually to himself as he crosses out another name. Snape casts a sideways glance at Lupin, and he notices with a sort of softness about him that the man is quite obviously pained. Lines have appeared between his brows, his eyes vacant as he watches the wind and the droplets of water falling from the deep navy clouds.

In what comes as a surprise to even himself, Severus attempts to distract him from this, searching in the inner pocket of his robes and pulling Remus away from the conversation.

"I, um..." He fishes deeper into it, his fingers clasping themselves around a glass bottle. "I brought you something."

He pulls it out, setting it softly in Lupin's hand and readjusting his robes again. Remus stares complicatedly down at it while Snape tries to come up with a way to get him to actually accept the offer.

"Wolfsbane," he says. "I know you'd rather not take it, but it stops the self-harming tendencies. Take it once a day for a week leading up to—"

Remus silences him with a look of inner turmoil, turning to his windowpane and looking back outside again. His voice is unsteady as he speaks, the tone empty, the words themselves far from solid. 

"Look, I really can't take this without discussing any sort of exchange," he reiterates, passing the potion back into Snape's hands. Severus sets his jaw, light ire completely taking over him until it mutates into cells upon cells of pure irascibility. Hissing through his teeth, he sets his tea on the windowsill and shoves the bottle into Lupin's chest, intimidatingly leaning in and glaring into his unfazed eyes.

"Then what, exactly," he snarls quietly, not intending to be noticed by the chattering crowd, "are you going to do?" He forces the bottle further into Lupin's ribs, painfully aware of the constantly-waxing moon.

"I..." Remus grasps for words, glancing off anxiously as Snape's eyes burrow their way into him, burning points into his skin. He shakes his head in resignation. "Nothing."

Severus is unchangeable. He thrusts the bottle harder against his ribs, fury boiling up his throat as he glowers up into Remus' slightly-taller face. 

"Take it, Lupin," he warns lowly, his feet planted, his wants secure. He has no intention of backing down, and they both know this. Remus hardens his expression, visibly agitated in a way Severus hasn't actually seen before. He gives a sharp glare in receipt, every part of his physical self turning to complete ceramic. He himself embodies the statue of Zeus.

"Yes, sir," he spits in angered defeat. With a flooding sense of pettily victorious relief, Snape watches his fingers curl around the bottle and rip it out of his grip as he moves to put it quickly into a drawer. He doesn't return to the window. Snape turns back and watches the rain on his own.

"Remus, your home is just lovely," the old woman next to McGonagall remarks gushingly to him. "Have you redecorated recently?"

Remus regathers his control, taking a breath and rectifying the hair that's fallen into his face. "Yes, Fallacia, thank you. I have," he replies, having a seat on the far end of his green sofa and amassing a teacup of his own. Elphias clears his throat to alert the woman.

"Miss Peritus, do you wish to be marked down as an emergency Order member?" he asks, and she turns temporarily to him to murmur a "Yes, dear," before reverting back to her praise of the house decorations.

"It's a shame Horace isn't here to see it," she remarks. "He'd love all the plants you've added. He was big on plants, you know."

Severus takes a feverish sip of tea, staring intensely outside. "He was also really big on leaving," he says, adding to the conversation as an opening line. Remus holds the bridge of his nose between his first finger and his thumb, squeezing his eyes shut and feeling contrite regarding the effort put into inviting the man here at all.

"Oh, lighten up, Severus," he pleads breathily, to which Snape turns around and gives him a look of cynical astonishment. If either of them are to have a change in attitude, he should the one to—

"Oh, but it's true, dear," Fallacia Peritus alludes, stirring her tea with a small silver spoon. "It's like him to run off and escape under pressure. Always was. You could tell in one split second that he'd be out the door and gone before you could decide how to deal with something yourself. He was always prepared for the worst."

Snape chortles humorlessly. "He really wasn't." If he had been, if this was true, filling his position wouldn't be so outright bockety.

"Severus," Remus warns shortly from his seat in the corner.

"Oh, but he was," Fallacia narrates, laughing fondly as she looks back. "He'd always have a suitcase ready. He'd fill it with everything he had. All his belongings fit themselves into that thing, just in case he'd have to hop up and go somewhere."

Snape pauses, narrowing his eyes and turning slowly away from the window.

"And... what sorts of... 'things,'" he asks slowly, slinking over to the seating area from his previous position, "did he plan on taking with him?"

"Oh, the normal things," Miss Peritus replies. "Clothes, food, trinkets, tools, old pictures and wads of money..."

Snape finds himself sitting in an armchair now, leaning forward and setting his tea on the edge of the coffee table. "Any..." He searches her eyes, looking for clues or signs or anything at all to latch on to. "...books?"

The room is suddenly still, Fallacia's teacup frozen in her grip. As the two make eye contact, there seems to be some sort of click in the understanding of Miss Peritus; a sudden awareness about Snape that he can't quite guess. The woman stiffens and averts her eyes, giving a slight shrug and laughing awkwardly into her tea.

"Oh, who can remember these things?" she asks softly. "I'm not sure. I can't remember it all, dear. Not with my memory like it is."

But something about how she sits, how she laughs, his her eyes glint with the slightest reflection of complete anxiety, itches at Snape's spine. There's something he doesn't know. Something she does. And it has to do with his books and Horace Slughorn's travel case.

"I have to go," he announces quietly. "You may mark down my name, Elphias, but I'll be absent for the rest of the night."

He stands up, traipsing back to the front door and exiting, pulling it shut behind him and taking a long breath. The rain beats down on his face as he steps out into it, the cool water soothing his every vein as it lands. Taking a moment to clear his head, he looks down at his feet, his gaze laving over the recently-transported garden plants and brick walkway, feeling the storm begin to extravasate through the fabric of his robes.

The door opens behind him. He doesn't have to look back to know who it is. He can feel the intention behind it, and furthermore the man behind the intention. He knows before it's proven.

Young footsteps approach him. There's a tense stillness when they stop.

"Remus, if you've come to chastise me about fairness and moral righteousness, I've heard it all before. Every version, every edition, every paraphrase and summary, which, ironically, does label me an expert," Snape chronicles. "Don't waste your precious, incurably sinless time."

But instead of being left alone, Severus feels a hand lay itself softly on his shoulder.

He turns around to see the most hopeless version of Remus Lupin he's quite sure he's ever known. The man is absolutely in ruins, his eyes dark with a lack of sleep and his hair falling wherever it deems unreasonable. Even a bit of stubble is beginning to appear on the lower half of his previously-clean-shaven face. His eyes speak only remorse. His expression screams sorrow.

"I wanted to say thank you," he forces out, his expression tight and stressed as he does, "for, you know, the..."

There's a pause. They both say nothing for a while. The rain drenches Lupin's already-dampened features, almost melting into them as Snape can only watch.

"I, um..." Remus takes a breath, forcing a nod and deciding its about time to remove his hand. He backs away a bit, leaving Severus' shoulder surprisingly warm. "Have a nice night."

Although he isn't sure what impetus it's supposed to reify, Snape replies just before the door closes again.

"You, too."

Pulling his robes tighter over his cold, damp arms, he grits his teeth at the fact that he offered such a response. He must be tired. His mind must be preoccupied. That's all. It has to be.

Whipping back around again, he closes his eyes and takes a breath, and with a rush of wind and a flicker of the nearest lamppost, Severus Snape completely disappears.

Only the rain is left, along with a bottle of dark blue liquid in the topmost dresser drawer in Remus Lupin's living room. Everything else is temporary. All else intends to change.

What matters is being the one to decide just when.


	8. 𝚅𝙸𝙸     >>     𝙲𝙷𝙰𝚁𝙼𝙸𝙽𝙶 𝙲𝙾𝙽𝚂𝚄𝙻𝚃𝙰𝚃𝙸𝙾𝙽𝚂

< 3 WEEKS >

He's decided that he must remedy his spell, and he's settling that today is the day to at least start the ridiculously asinine process.

He spent all of last night lying insomnolent, urging himself to just go to sleep, beseeching his own instincts to let him alone and leave him to fall into his own dreams. But he couldn't do it. Thoughts kept running around him, hissing against his ears in the fashion of the unforgiving snake like which he himself is described. Hypotheses. Dubiety. Complete uncertainty. And all this, inopportunely, orbiting tight round the memory of Remus Lupin standing out in the rain, and the sensation of his hand laying itself gently on his unsheltered shoulder.

He's decided that he shouldn't be letting this affect him in such a way. Absolutely so.

He's decided that he shouldn't remember Remus going out of his way to make him tea the way Albus said he liked it, or the pleas to offer him assisting services in compensation for some very free Wolfsbane. He won't pay any notice to how he likes Bruce Springsteen and house plants and accents his entire home with greens and reds. He won't think any longer about his soft handwriting on half of the bottles in his classroom, or how all of his suits and vests are tailored in colors that match each possible shade a leaf revolves through, green and dark mustard and deep mahogany and many, many browns.

In fact, he has no idea why this kept him awake at all. But he doesn't like it. It irks him, not knowing why. It's muddled. Labyrinthine. It's as ambiguous as he is considered to be, and anyone with any minuscule sense of emotional intelligence knows that Severus Snape's least-favorited thing in the history and colossal expanse of the universe, in whole, is his own self. Living in his own flesh is his greatest grievance, all quietus and tribulations and only-partly-deserved defamation completely aside.

So, after hours of insomnia, as the sun peeked too soon over the pivots and bourns of Hogwarts and confirmed that any rest would no longer be had until it set again, Severus had torn himself out of bed and hied into his robes. He now catapults himself down the hallways with the most extortionate possible speed at which one can walk before breaking into a sort of frenzied skip, gripping his wand as tightly as he can bear and shuffling through the empty, slumbering edifice to the ward of Filius Flitwick.

He needs to repair the spell because it pains him to know that he's letting his mind wander from Lily. He wants to respect her passing, to avenge it in little subtle ways, and so he wants to remember it. But this is something that's difficult to do when you have nothing to remind yourself as you slowly step out of the initial wave of grief. It's difficult to do when the only way to acquire a reminder is through a system that doesn't even work.

He fleets up four sets of staircases, recklessly refusing to falter as they move beneath him. Leaping from the detached end of one onto his desired platform, he shoves open the door leading to where he knows Flitwick is settled. It slams against the wall, resulting in a startled whoop from the classroom ahead of him. Knowing immediately that this is the voice of Filius himself, Snape oils his way into the Charms room with a cadence to his step that of a tiptoeing tap-dancer and secures the door behind him. He barely has time to turn dramatically back to the man before he's responded, clearly not giving in to his such necessary theatrics.

"Severus Snape," Flitwick exclaims with an enthusiastic tone that Snape would never dream of adopting into his repertoire, closing a book and setting down a blue feather pen. "I'll be."

"We were bound to meet again at some point, Filius," Severus replies dryly, "given that I work here. Don't treat it like the coming of Christ."

"Oh, and congratulations on that, by the way," Flitwick remarks pleasantly, stepping down from his desk and making his way to where Snape stands on the lowered floor of his classroom. 

"The coming of Christ?" asks Snape snidely, and Filius faces him with a still expression.

"Your position," he clarifies with a smooth step forward. "Of course, I would have welcomed you earlier, but I had some business to attend to and didn't make it to the assembly."

A feeling of smug hilarity whips through Snape's blood at the information. McGonagall would love knowing she's shamed him over not noticing a man for being three feet tall when, in reality, he wasn't even present to begin with. He lowers his gaze to Flitwick, who seems to be giving him some sort of visual examination.

"My, how you've grown," Filius says with a sigh of fond nostalgia. "It—"

"Seems only yesterday, I know," Snape intersperses, crinkling his nose at such formulaic small-talk. "Filius, I've come to you at this accursed hour for insight regarding a certain spell. Don't expect to be au courant with its label."

Flitwick chuckles, raising his brows and turning back in the direction of his stacks upon stacks of books by the large front window. "I do know my way around spells, Severus," he replies. "There aren't many that I have not encountered."

"Claiming to know everything just because you teach a related course. Filius," Snape drawls sarcastically, "how like a Ravenclaw you are."

Flitwick ignores this blatantly, making a point out of picking up a book entitled The Magic of Modern Maturity and opening it to the first page, the passive-aggressiveness of the behavior only making the gesture a show of flagrant hypocrisy.

"Oh, Albus hired me for a reason," comes the somehow-lighthearted reply. "Now, gee up, then! Let me see this little problem of yours. What is it that's so funny?"

Severus removes the smirk he realizes he's wearing, equilibrizing his expression back to its typical unaffected state. "Filius, when I suggest that you do not know something, I recommend you heed my theory. I'm quite aware of your knowledge; if I wasn't, there would be no motive for me to walk halfway across the building at the mere break of dawn to ask for your advice regarding it." 

Flitwick finally becomes quiet, smiling amiably in welcome of the conjuration. Not sensing Severus' need for thespian pause, he prompts him with a circular wave of his hand. "Well?"

Snape nods, imagining to the best of his ability what he wants. The book. The presence of what he had with Lily Potter. 

Pointing his wand loosely ahead of him, he closes his eyes and takes a short breath.

"Delocaponum."

Something falls from the ceiling. Flitwick, with the agility of anyone with such convenient size, ducks under his own podium and catches it before it hits the floor, his brows already knitted in puzzlement, now knowing that it's very true he has no idea what undertaking this hex is ought to cap.

"Well," he sighs, looking at the object in his palm and referring to the charm, "that's a new one."

"Is it?" Snape remarks caustically, and Filius walks over to deposit the item into his outstretched palm. It's a stamp for a wax seal, which he agnizes while studying the engraving on the end of the wooden handle. The stamp itself is metal, showing the mirror image of the words, "GARDEN FOR HOPE • 1953," in bold letters around the rim. Severus tucks it into his pocket, frowning at the failure yet again and preparing to elucidate what's wrong with it.

"It should go without saying that this spell is doubtlessly meant to undo misplacement, if it is that you know anything whatsoever about Latin," he explains, tucking his wand back into his robes and beginning to pace slowly across the room. "I would use it often back in school to find things I'd lost. But something's wrong with it now. It brings me items that have never belonged to me. It's taking them from someone. It's making them lost."

Flitwick engages a moment of cerebration before walking back to his stack of books and digging through the titles. Snape stops pacing, watching him flip through pages and cross-reference them before finding a chapter that he likes and skimming through it.

"You know, Severus," he says, his words disjointed and preoccupied as he scans the literature below him, "a spell never truly malfunctions. There's a reason it's doing what it's doing. They know their true purposes better than we do."

This proclamation stills the room. Sudden agitation beats from Snape's tongue thwart his vacant lungs, and he bares his teeth against it, hissing at the words.

"Then why is it performing its complete inverse?" he snarls at the air. Flitwick merely shrugs, bookmarking a page and handing the book to him.

"Maybe," he insinuates as Severus takes the book from his extended arms, "it knows something you don't."

Snape looks blankly down at the publication. Filius points to the page he marked, calmly destining their focuses to the deep blue ribbon hanging out of the book.

"Page four hundred and twenty-eight," he says pointedly, seeming rushed as students begin to file in. "It might be of some use to you. In the meantime, we both have classes to direct, don't you agree?" He turns to the room, leaving Snape to glare down at the novel in his hands. "Good morning, students! Please prepare your wands and some parchment while I get ready."

Snape opens the book to the oriented page, reading through it as he exits the room and rushes to the ground floor, where he shoves his way between students and sweeps down another winding staircase into the dungeons. Flipping the page, he backs his way into his classroom, shoving the door open with his spine to glance indirectly at the room full of Year Fours at their tables.

"Take out your textbooks," he directs, distrait as he swirls his way to his desk and sets the open book down in front of him. "Turn to chapter nine. Split into groups of three and replicate to the best of your ability the first recipe. If you do so without making any unnecessary noise or setting any of your unsuspecting peers on fire, you will receive the rest of the hour to spend in the courtyard."

The deafening silence aids him as he flips through the book from Flitwick, belaying his efforts every so often to jot down notes on the subject. He finds himself snagged on one punctilious paragraph, his face softening in interest as it catches his attention.

"On the odd occasion, a spell will appear to work against its caster. This phenomenon is referred to as charm delinquency, the phrase coined by Selah Tilmint circa 1705, and its severity ranges between anything from minor malfunctions to complete inverse reactions. Although often caused by user error in students or relatively inexperienced wizards, another main cause is malfunction in the circumstance under which it is cast.

"On the occasions that either the intention or purpose of a given spell is already achieved, the purpose of the spell overrides the intention, or the user is abusing the spell's power, many more complicated charms will rebound or be forced into putting their energy into another intention. The result of this will always be related to its cause, e.g. a healing spell will always heal something, whether obvious or not to the caster."

Snape scrawls out the indispensable lines, adhering his notes to the wall by his desk and checking up hastily on his class' headway between sheets of parchment. He's finished with the book by the end of the day, bounding to Flitwick's wing and leaving it quickly on the ground outside his door before hustling out of school grounds to another one of those ghastly meetings. Whatever it is that's let him throw away his time like this, he isn't sure, but he understands quite quickly that he'd best reassess it. Spontaneity is a concept he values a lot more than he's previously realized. His feet hitting grass as he rushes outside, he only wishes he wouldn't have to rush at all.

The air is frigid today, quite a bit more than it was yesterday, and he finds himself shivering as he closes his eyes and transports to Remus Lupin's cobblestone street, hurrying to the front door and giving a slow, bodeful knock.

The door is efficient to be unbarred today, and Remus is the one to welcome him inside. He appears to be in a better state than he was when Severus last saw him, seeming somewhat rested and less stressed than he let on last night. Ella Fitzgerald is his chosen Muggle artist of the night, adding a soft ambience to the chatter already taking place in the room.

"Severus," he greets with a miraculously very-genuine smile, closing the front door as Snape steps into his home. "I didn't think you'd come back."

"It's cold," Severus replies with a change of conversational route, dodging the remark and tipping his head pointedly in the direction of the front yard. "The plants you hold so dearly are going to die if you don't prepare them with proper treatment. Frost is imminent on such a day."

"They're perennials," Lupin answers quickly, and Snape tries his best not to let on that he has no idea what the hell that means.

"Fitzgerald tonight, is it?" he observes, absentmindedly following Remus as he makes his way to his kitchen. "My father loathed that woman through his last ailing, insufficient breath. I applaud you for playing it."

"I applaud you for not saying something so dishearteningly low," Remus counters loosely, kneeling down and digging through his cupboards for a tray. "I'm surprised you don't agree with him merely because it's me who put it on."

Severus takes the tray as he hands it out to him, his physical willingness at complete war with his mental stubbornness as he retorts, "I applaud you for mocking my distaste for your existence."

Remus places mugs and scones on the tray, focusing intently as he arranges them just slowly enough for Snape's arms to begin to fall tired. "I applaud you for letting yourself think you have distaste for my existence."

"And what alludes otherwise?" Severus seethes back as Remus grabs his steaming kettle from the stove and gives him a cool, subtly amused glance.

"If you hated me as much as you want to think you do," he reasons, "you wouldn't have endorsed my choice in music."

Severus opens his mouth to reply. "I—"

"Twice," Lupin interrupts exaggeratedly, holding his pointer finger out as if he's just said something that completely alters the course of history, which, in a sense, isn't terribly off. "You liked my music choices twice."

"Just as I liked Voldemort's choices twice. This moment itself isn't the messiah," Severus replies, and Remus only laughs in return, directing himself out of the kitchen and leading the way back to the remainder of his guests.

His vest is a deep brown today. It matches the rest of his outfit, but this is always the case. Why must his clothes always correspond? Why does he do that? Not even a white collar or a dark tie take away from the autumn shade he's cloaked in. Not a single black button obstructs a lone hue. But Snape furthermore debates that it truly isn't his place to query this, as he's never worn a color other than black in his entire life and won't change this even after he's died. He will rot in the color. Let it manducate him. Become it.

"Severus, you can sit wherever," Remus offers casually, and Snape looks quickly away, thinking suddenly that it's about time to stop focusing on the excommunicated vest. Sitting on an armchair adjacent to McGonagall, he silently eases himself into listening to the conversation.

"But if it's untrue," Albus is debating, stopping briefly as Lupin hands him a teacup. "Thank you, Remus. If he really isn't dead, we'll need some sort of means of reorganizing meetings in a way that isn't conspicuous, and we need to be in tight communication without being found out."

Miss Peritus reaches for a scone as Remus continues to pass out teacups. "Albus, dear," she says softly, "it's quite certain he is dead."

"Ah, but Fallacia," Remus chuckles, halfway through bringing the tray around the room. "If it were completely certain, none of us would be here. Take a cup, Severus."

Snape looks off. "I'm not—" he begins, but Lupin has already dropped one into his hands and moved on.

"Slughorn did mention that the man had an affinity for Horcruxes as a student," Elphias pipes up. "It's very possible that he put them to use before his attack on the Potter family."

Snape avoids the topic of the Potters, pouring hot tea into his cup and taking a small golden stirring spoon from the table. McGonagall purses her lips before adding her thoughts, all this commotion rather replicating those Parliament discussions that Severus' father would talk about so often growing up. Everybody putting a word in but nobody really getting a word out of it.

"If only Horace were actually here," Minerva complains. "Then he could set this conversation straight."

"And I'm sure he'd tell you all that a Horcrux is something too difficult for someone as weak as he was to use," Peritus rebuts, sitting back in her seat. Pionia Egressus, a woman Severus only remembers from his younger years in school, scoffs at her from her seat.

"You underestimate his power," she inculpates as Snape avoidantly pours cream into his cup. Fallacia becomes more heated, crossing her arms over her chest and making a slick point in return.

"The monster was defeated by an infant," she hisses.

"He was defeated by a prophecy," Albus corrects, but Miss Peritus refuses to take this into account.

"Well, if dear Slughorn can't tell us anything about You-Know-Who," she says, her tone just as bitter as the smell of coffee on her suit, "perhaps his fill-in knows a thing or two."

The room falls silent. Snape dissolves some sugar into his tea.

"Severus," Albus prompts quietly, and Snape looks up to see the entire room staring expectantly at him. He adjourns only momentarily before recommencing the stirring of his tea once more, hopelessly pretending that he hasn't been mentioned or included at all.

"You know about He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named," Fallacia says, and Remus gives him a desperate look of pleading, urging him to be logical about this.

"Yeah, Severus," Pionia calls out. "Tell her off! You know how the dark side functions. You know she's wrong."

Snape merely stirs his tea with the small golden spoon, looking out as the two of them begin going back and forth again.

"Tell us I'm right!" Peritus vocalizes, leaning forward in her seat as the room erupts yet again in a cacophony of frustrated calls. Severus, not particularly feeling like agreeing with anybody, keeps quiet and sips his tea. Elphias holds up a hand and beckons for silence, looking at him as the room finally quiets down. He speaks.

"Professor Snape," he acknowledges, interest in his eyes as the Order stares him down again. "What is it that you know about... You-Know-Who?"

Severus sets his spoon back on the table, crossing his left leg over the other and staring blankly back. "I know," he replies, his tone already permeated with what sounds like pessimistic derision, "that, for a group of people who claim not to fear the man, you have an awful record when it comes to using his name."

Glancing up, he sees Remus give him a bewildered stare of exasperation, gifting him the energy to produce another agnate sentence.

"In the limited number of conversations I've held individually with him," Snape adds, "there have been occasions when I've said the name Voldemort to his face and it catches no attention even then. The fact that you fear uttering it when he can't even hear you is completely and inconsolably—"

"Severus, just answer the question," Remus sighs, and Snape, who thinks it's time to admit that he's already agreed with Lupin one too many times today, decides to push his limits instead.

"What question?"

"You told me just yesterday that he was dead," Minerva points out, tugging the room into complete stillness as she searches him for answers. "Do you truly think that's true?"

"About whom are we talking?" Snape shoots back, and, for once, he's crafted his way into a mutual silence as everyone glares one another down. He won't get a rejoinder. The Order is too affrighted to speak it.

But Remus finds a way to irk him yet again, his voice mixing in with the old jazz and the faint, lukewarm smell of pastries as he gives Severus a warning prompt.

"You know exactly who we mean," he says, and Snape lifts a brow, staring back at his anticipatory expression with no intention of satisfying its wants. His ungenerous silence puts the room at unease, everyone except for Albus Dumbledore stiffening slightly in their seat as they look on.

"How do we know we can trust you, then?" Doge questions, setting his plate and its scone down in his lap. He doesn't appear hungry anymore. "If you can't even answer this, how is it that we know we aren't under attack right now? That you aren't the heir to the throne?"

Snape sips his tea, overtly amused at Lupin's pointed frustration as he glances over at his set jaw. "I suppose," he drones slowly, "that the fact that I haven't killed you yet is your only factor to debate with."

He sets his teacup down on the edge of the coffee table, giving Elphias a sly drag of eye contact. "But, really," he adds, "you don't."

"Who invited you, anyway?" Pionia accuses, and Remus shoots Albus a quick glance of permeable regret. Fallacia gives a nod of approval, glaring roughly at Severus as she sets down her tea. 

"Why don't you just stop coming to our meetings, boy?" she suggests, her tone soft but the words sharpened to a point, weaving a nasty snarl into the bleak sentence. She reminds Snape of his father. He decides that he doesn't like her.

"Alright," Remus interjects, standing up and motioning with his hands for everyone to cool the words thrown out of their flaming throats. "Let's all go home for the night and give ourselves time to think through this. When we've all regathered our thoughts and looked over our choices—" He shoots Severus a meaningful look, which he returns with a dark smirk. "—we can resume and start making the bigger decisions."

Pionia scowls, gathering her things and standing to her feet. "If we come back at all," she replies scornfully. "This traitor might have turned us in by then."

"Oh, of course," Snape retorts. "Which is precisely why you should watch your step, Egressus." 

"Severus," Remus calls over to him, pointing his palm at his face with a long inhale as the guests begin to file out. "Shut. Up."

Snape stares coolly back, standing up and waiting for everyone else to leave as Lupin says a rushed goodbye to all the others, turning to him again as Albus follows them all to the front door.

"You're not leaving," he says, and Severus sits gladly back down. "We need to talk."

Fallacia Peritus wavers at the door before leaving, turning to Remus and leaning in to whisper something she has no idea Severus can still hear.

"You've lost your mind, Remus, letting the man in your home like this," she sibilates, wrapping a scarf around her frail old neck, so breakable, so hilariously fragile, as she preaches her angered warning. But Lupin only ushers her out, giving a small chuckle and a muffled reply; something about how "That'd be the second thing I've lost today."

The door closes, a swift cascade of cold air forcing itself in as Remus locks the door and returns to sit on the deep green sofa vicinal to Snape. He's quiet as he gathers his thoughts, staring at the wall and seeking to study it. Severus picks his tea back up again, basking in the absence of people and clamor, losing his thoughts as he lets himself be surrounded by the looped crackling pattern of the record player, which has reached the end of the album and has begun reading the edge of vinyl wherein nothing is printed at all.

"You're disgruntled because I pissed them off," Severus assumes bluntly. Remus only sighs, sitting back and leaning his head against the wall.

"No, actually," he replies, his tone exhausted as he stares at the ceiling. "In hindsight, that was kind of funny. But, yeah, no, completely unrelated." His middle finger runs circles around the worn edge of the sofa's fabric as the rest of him sits completely still. "On the contrary, I wanted to discuss our deal."

Severus feels his face fall into annoyance. "Oh."

"We can make this tedious and unnecessarily long— Do you want more tea, by the way?"

"That's fine."

"Anyway," Remus continues, refilling both of their cups, "we can make this gruelingly long, or — or — we can make it practical."

"Remus, you're far from practical," Severus confutes dryly, watching the hot tea steam as it flows into the teacups in front of him. "If you thought practically at all, we wouldn't have to discuss this, especially more than once. How many times now? Three? How deftly hypocritical. Such tragic human satire we've been."

Lupin pays no mind to the dramatic monologue, but, then again, nobody ever does. He turns his face to Severus, all frustration gone from his features, everything about him blank in determination. 

"Name something."

Severus analyzes his eyes, studying their soft, pointed shape as he decides on what to make of the words. "Like... what?" he asks, the small flames from the green, pine-scented candles on the table reflecting in the light irises that he stares into, turning Lupin's eyes a bright, forgiving gold.

"Anything," Remus replies, not seeming to notice the focused attention as he sets the tea kettle back down, "that I can possibly help you to do."

Severus is unconvinced in the words. He gives a deadpan look back, deciding not to give in to such affability. "Genuinely nothing," he says, and leaves it at that.

Remus isn't surprised by his answer. He merely purses his lips, the conversation tiring him and eating away at the edges of his spine. If only he had the self-respect to collapse here and not stand up again.

"You're so closed off. It's insane," he replies unfeelingly. Severus returns the accusation.

"You're equally open," he seethes. "Keep yourself from acting as if I'm the only square wheel on the cart."

Remus shrugs. This, after all, is more than equitable. "What about your book?" he asks, and Severus blinks.

"What?"

"The book you're looking for," Lupin clarifies. "How's that going?"

Snape bites the inside of his cheek, looking down at his hands. "That's proving to be especially difficult," he replies before realizing the intention behind the question and adding to his response. "Far more difficult than it is to just... supply you with some herbs in a bottle every month. Finding it is a job for one who deserves it."

But Remus is not unmanned by this. Wolfsbane is too immoderate for him to so simply forget his emotional debt. "I'll do it," he declares softly, and Severus gives him a long, void look.

"No, you won't."

Lupin tips his head, a playful smirk easing his way back into his eyes. "I see that you like to tell yourself you have power over these things," he jests. 

"Well, it is my own... personal endeavor," Severus returns, and Remus snorts.

"With the fits you've thrown about it," he chortles, grabbing another small spoon from its uninfluenced position on the table, "there's not a soul I know that isn't aware that you're looking. Personal indeed. Sugar?"

Severus pauses. "I'll... accept it, thank you." 

"The sugar or the deal?" Lupin asks, scooping almost-generous amounts of sugar into Snape's teacup. "Both? Say both."

Severus narrows his eyes. "You're just dying for a connection, aren't you?" he scowls, his gaze flickering between Lupin and the tea with the noise of the turntable static. Remus smiles subtly, handing Snape a spoon for stirring.

"You're the one dying without them, Severus," he counters mildly. "Besides, we have a past to mend. Apples to throw." He gives Snape a pithy look, and the communiqué is translated quite quickly. 

"You can't alter previous events, Lupin," Severus replies silkily, pulling his robes around his arms as the mention of an apple draws him back into the cold autumn wind of the recent past.

"Sorry," Remus sarcastically corrects. "I meant that we have a present to stabilize and a future to build, and that you're out of connections, and I'm out of connections, and, by the way, Albus doesn't count."

"Frankly, Remus, you should fully grasp that I sincerely do not care," Severus mutters. "We don't have a future. I've just given you a gift so that you don't maul my students. How long are you willing to try and argue about this?"

"Oh, forever," Lupin replies lightly. "Milk?"

"Fine," Severus answers. "Whatever you think suits it is... decent."

Lupin pours the cream into the teacup in front of him, the white interweaving itself with the dark brown and circulating together with the hot steam, the dancing colors convoying Snape to a time before today. Or, rather, convoying a time before today to him.

This is something he's remembered recently. It picks up where he left off, as if his last hindrance upheaved the needle on its player and hit a pause command that he never intended to select. He sees leaves at eye-level, the deep red of them splattered by the deeper red of his very own blood. He sees a memory of the Marauders themselves, recalling the pain in his ribs and the throbbing of his nose and the deep crispness of the October air.

"Do something, Moony!" James Potter's distant voice urged, his pointed shoe giving Severus' ribs another good kick. "Don't just toss that damned apple in the air. Throw it! Do it! You're bloody useless!"

Remus stared complicatedly at James, the rotting fruit still gripped tightly between his fingers. He dropped it from hand to hand as he remained algid in his own shoes, watching the other three kicking Snape like it was their last day alive. His eyes fluttered back and forth between them all. Sirius turned to give him a glare.

"Come on, now," he called. "You heard him. Throw it!"

Remus seemed to be emboldened by Black, his words having a greater effect on him than Potter's ever could. He gripped the apple tightly, his fingernails turning white as he poised his arm to throw it. The wind whistled through the leaves below. Severus caught his eye, spitting his own blood off his lips, and could have sworn he caught a momentarily fleeting glimpse of sympathy.

The apple hurled itself through the air, the reds and browns of its skin smudging as its speed outran his vision. Severus recoiled as he anticipated the impact, already damaged enough.

But it never came.

"Remus!" Potter howled as the apple hit his spine, causing him to twist back around to face him. "That was supposed to hit him, idiot! You're such a worthless shot."

"Sorry," Lupin replied quickly, glancing down at Severus again as the other three backed away.

"We should go," Pettigrew whispered quickly, ushering them all away, forcing Lupin back and disconnecting their eye contact. "Someone's bound to catch us."

They hurried off, leaving their kill to wallow in suffering, the way wolves do. Snape, choking and crimping up in pain, felt confusion run through him. That throw couldn't have been a mistake. Nobody can miss that specifically in such close range.

Forcing himself back up into a sitting position, he leaned back against the tree behind him and began the affair of healing his own wounds, descrying with a rush of relief that his wand was still in tact.

The leaves melt away. The sky drops itself out of his vision.

He sits on Lupin's armchair again, staring at the wall, taking it all in. He revisits the corporeality of that day with a feeling of empirical unearthing, glancing back at Remus and realizing that this man has never before done anything to hurt him.

Perhaps they don't have a past to mend at all. Perhaps he doesn't even have a reason for forcing him away.

Snape realizes with a tart sting to the tongue that his dislike for Remus Lupin has only stemmed from his acrimony towards his own past. The fact that Lupin made an appearance in it at all is the only reason he's petulant in regards to his existence. Criminalized only for relation. What a needlessly foolish and helplessly unfair grudge to hold.

With a breath of newfound civility for him, Severus reviews his own reactions, his own decisions, his own replies. He thinks of the Wolfsbane. He thinks of Lupin's never-ending, internal compunction. He takes it all into account. It's the least he knows he should do.

"So what, exactly," he begins as Remus hands him his tea, taking it politely as he continues, "are the terms under which you'd prefer to accept my potions? I assure you that finding the imprudently absent book is far from worth your time." He drinks the tea as Lupin shakes his head.

"Severus, I assume you understand that my values are far different from your own," he replies. "I'd like to help you, and if that's something I can help you with, then I'm eager and willing to spend any amount of time on it at all." He gives him an honest look, his gaze unquestionably genuine. Snape feels caught in his own trap, and he sits silently while he downs his tea at the rate of which his father downed alcohol, almost as if the tea could relieve his problems to the same effect.

"Fine," he says eventually, the word short and rushed. Remus looks up in tantalized shock.

"Fine?"

"It's a deal," Severus clarifies, reaching out his hand to shake Lupin's, quite like one would when securing a bureau interchange. "If, of course, you haven't decided on anything more sane yet."

But Remus grabs his hand, shaking it sturdily before he can even complete his sentence. His hands are warm and soft, just as they were last night, as Severus' are cold and frail. One hand alike that of a dead man, while the other keeps very, very alive. They're complete opposites, the two, somehow drawn together by a deal that's so unlikely to happen to two such unrelated people, but here they are. By destiny, fate, or perhaps nature's own mistake, they've ended up here. And what an oddly comforting place to be.

"Deal," Lupin utters, and he pulls his hand away. His palm is left cold, while Snape's is left warm. They both ponder over the temperature.

Severus leaves just minutes later, falls of potion-taking directions pouring passionately from his lips as Remus follows him to the door, barely listening at all and more focused on the fact that he's finally hooked what he wants with this man. He can finally give up some remorse after doing something helpful in return. Of course, this is easily an act of moral licensing, but it's a moral act nonetheless.

"And don't take it on the night of; take it the morning of the seven consecutive days leading up to it," Severus rushes, grabbing the front door and letting himself out. "Otherwise you'll have to drink the last spoonful after the moon has risen, which—"

He halts as Remus drops something into his hand. It's a folded paper napkin, wherein sits a scone from his coffee table, topped with a raspberry vanilla glaze. Lupin hasn't the heart to tell him that he knows all his lectured counsel because he's taken the potation various occasions before, but this seems to shut him up just the way it needs to.

"Have a pastry," Remus offers, even though the pastry itself in already in Snape's frail fingers.

Severus looks down at it, his features tight in complicated confusion over what to feel. "I'm... not hungry."

Like a pusillanimous bull in a modern corrida, Remus snorts and steps backward, ready to shut the front door in his face if he dares to try and give it back. "Look at you," he says, motioning to Severus with his hand. "Your limbs are blades of grass. Just take the thing before I..."

But he trails off, seeming to catch himself in a strange thought, his expression turning reserved and somewhat unquiet. Severus is unaffected by this, blinking soullessly at him as he awaits an ending.

"Before you what?"

There's a beat. Lupin shakes his head. Shrugs.

"I don't know," he concludes. "Just... do it so you don't... starve yourself to death."

They stare one another down, although this time it's less of a glare than normal. There's a new basis built between them. Where they stand, new platforms lay. Bricks of approbation, perhaps, or cedar comprised of some sort of vaguely fond interdependence. Friendly concern; caring protection. All this, of course, wound up into a more complicated expression on their faces than they used to wear, the scowls and glares mixing with these new shades into a soft, more casually indifferent hue. And, although indifference itself can be worse than any hatred on the surface of their ever-darkening world, this feeling is indifferent in a mutually-caring way; softness in its purest possible form.

Severus closes his fingers around the scone, the rough texture of the napkin scraping against the porcelain-mimicking icing glazed so thinly on the top. He doesn't tell Remus that he doesn't often like the taste of scones. He instead nods in appreciation, envisaging that it isn't often that people gift him food out of such a caring standpoint. In fact, he isn't sure anyone has done this recently at all. 

Remus watches with modest complacency, leaning against his doorframe, standing loosely in the warm light of his own home as Severus Snape stands outside of it. He finds it funny that, even now, their physical placements are reflective of the rest of them, him — warm — standing in candlelight and the glow of yellow Victorian-style lamps, and Snape — cold — stiff in the damp fulguration of the waxing blue moon.

"And... goodnight," Remus adds after a moment, breaking his eyes away and moving to close the door. Snape finds his face numb, not knowing exactly what to do with it, and diverts his gaze as well to another location — this happening to be the raspberry scone in his palm.

"Goodnight," he replies, hearing the front door latch shut and watching Remus Lupin disappear behind it.

The night wind whips against his cloak as he turns to face the cobblestone avenue, the streetlights weaving in with the dark tendrils of his own hair as they dance around his view. He takes a breath, feeling, by some means, freer than he did when he arrived on this doorstep just this evening. He left something arduous behind today, although it's hard to diagnose specifically what it is. He only knows by the lightness of his own shoulders and the painlessness in his own spine that, somewhere along the course of time today, Severus Snape has let something go.

The cold wind brings him back to the end of October as he steps toward the street. He remembers one of the worst days of his life with a deviant sensation of ease. He recalls seeing Lily exanimate on the floor, and Harry Potter — so unfalteringly alive — just next to her, but tonight pilots a sense of peace about it that he hasn't sustained before. His anger, his resentment, the loss and the initial wave of trauma, have all melted off like lard on the bones of a seared swine. He's left with only the visual memories. The emotions have completely quieted. His chest feels clear. He feels, for the first time in years, completely decent and absolutely fine.

Remus watches him from the front window, his eyes sealed softly on his benign silhouette as he moves away from his front door and into the cold night air, almost as if there's any reason or means about making sure he gets home safely. He sees him look down at the scone in his hand, and he almost expects him to drop it there and depart unescorted by the thing. But he doesn't. Snape's hand, in fact, closes around it one more time, and, in the navy blue wind and the frost-biting cold, Remus observes as the wizard, the alchemist, the mysteriously cynical professor, takes one more step away and completely disappears.

Lupin's eyes stay fixed on the empty space he leaves behind, watching the wind shiver against his old garden gate, the crisp, brown-fading leaves of his plants shuddering gently in the cold. It's almost lonelier now that his home is empty, regardless of the fact that Severus Snape is the most coruscating beacon of loneliness the world has ever seen. Solitude drips from his shoulders and stains his footsteps. But somehow, in all this chaos, his loneliness combats against Remus' own, blue against so dissimilar blue, until they've cancelled one another out and both cease to taunt them until either leave the attendance of the other.

Remus turns back to his silent living room, walking to the record player as he finally takes notice to its rebroadcasting static. Lifting the needle, he removes the record, setting it in its case back on his shelf and tidying up the coffee table. 

There's one scone left, and he throws it outside for the birds. He doesn't often like scones.


	9. 𝚅𝙸𝙸𝙸     >>     𝙰𝙽𝙳 𝚃𝙷𝙴 𝙲𝙷𝙰𝚂𝙴 𝙱𝙴𝙶𝙸𝙽𝚂

< 1 MONTH, 5 DAYS >

Within an hour of darkness, the earnest ebony and uncertain sightlessness of visual reality are split asunder by a stalwart orange light.

A candle is enkindled, resting calmly on the cornered edge of Severus Snape's office desk. He sits and beholds its view, his gaze aping the vacillating figure in its cabaret along the darkened surfaces it sees.

Ninth January, a barren handful of years ago.

Snow had fallen overnight on the split shingles of Spinner's End, lacing the dark, pauperized streets with a thin sheet of splendor for as long as it could last. But it was all a façade, the loveliness. All of it was for show, Shakespeare on the broken stone of the avenues, Andrew Lloyd Webber against the dark brick and chipping black siding of the conjoined walls.

Under the snow, past the nanoscopic granules of frozen, anemic water, was where all the grotesqueness resided. Just inches through it, inside the surfaces it clung to so parlously, shallowly within the flaking walls, was every sin it could wish to overthrow. And it wasn't the buildings themselves — or their unwealthy and unkempt rooms — that were the most loathly aspects of the streets. It was the life kept inside of them.

His father smoked a pipe as he sat ungainly across from Severus, whose mother had pushed a wrapped gift over the facet of the worn table with a tight smile and a homely wink.

"We're so glad you could come home for your birthday, Sevie," she cooed, nudging his father unambiguously with her elbow. "Aren't we, now?"

His father stayed silent, his chassis rigid and viscoid in the dark room, minimal light showing through the window behind him. He was merely a delineation to Severus, though this was how he was regardless of sunlight. You could put him under the blaring flash of a fluorescent hospital ceiling, pointing spotlights and prisms straight into the depths of his pale skin, pressing hot, luminous irons against his steel muscles, and the boy would see only shadows. You could take a single cell from his blood and place it under the searing display of a microscope, and all Tobias Snape would ever look like to his son was a mass of absolutely nothing. A color darker than black. A weight heftier than the core of the very Earth.

"It's nice seeing you, too, Mother," Severus replied, ignoring his father as equally as he ignored him. "You hadn't written in an insouciant length of time. I almost began to wonder whether or not you missed me at all."

His mother's face twitched, a pang shooting through her eyes at the words. "Oh, of course I did!" she countered quickly, collaring his hand and giving it a heartening squeeze. "You're still my little boy, no matter how big you grow. I've just been busy is all. Just busy." She forced a smile. Severus saw through it. "Why don't you open your gift?"

She let go of his hand, pushing her show of packaged, decorated largesse closer to him and inviting him to unwrap it. Severus unhurriedly tore the paper, pulling out the object inside. It was a book. The same book he lost. The one he's looking for now.

"We got word that you're exceeding your Potions class by quite a bit," his mother expressed lovingly, giving an enlivened smile as he lifted the front cover and peered through the contents. "I know it isn't much, but I scraped together what I could and went and bought you the textbook for Year Six. Now you can learn and perfect the recipes a few years ahead if you'd like."

Severus read contently through the pages, the fluttering texture easing against the skin on his fingertips as he flipped them, the smell of ink and printed novel paper flooding his sinuses and tempering his pulse. He was never one for being expressive, but his mother was used to this; she knew with every square inch of her coruscating, flourishing soul that he was thoroughly keen on this gift.

"Why don't you read it while I clean up from dinner?" she counseled, amassing the plates from the table and heading into the incommodious kitchen a room over. She left Severus sitting there, wholly aware of his father's dark stare on the outermost film of his skin. He didn't look up. He pretended to focus on the words below him.

"Giving into that rubbish, now, are we?" his father accused once the woman was out of earshot, his lips turning into a sneer that, over some amount of time, the young boy would soon adopt. "Putting leaves in a pot and turning frogs into pebbles as if it's at all useful to real life?"

His eyes were vicious, the pupils almost making themselves into a twain of serpentine points. His yellowing teeth were daggers against his own lips. Severus near expected them to make the circumambient skin bleed. Shriveling back, he felt he might be bitten himself.

"The only things being turned at this table, Father," he groused back, his voice so soft it was almost hard to catch the words as they sifted through the room, "are molehills to mountains. I'm sure you're familiar with the phrase; it comes from your plain and so-spotless blood."

He regretted this immediately as his father expeditiously stood to his feet, his teeth bared as he leaned over the table to whisper forebodingly into his face, his breath reeking of smoke and alcohol. Severus flinched, anticipating a slap or prod of some sort but only getting sickening, feverish words. He coiled beneath them. He hated their presence. It bemused his sense of security; kept him on his toes.

"What have I told you about respecting your father?" the man behested sternly, his hand gripping his pipe white-knuckled, pulling it out from shakily from its dangling position in his lips and tapping it sideways. The ashes poured out onto the surface of the table, and Severus tensed his jaw, looking down in fathomless contrition. His breath wavered as he took a breath and replied with all the vigor he had.

"Don't speak unless spoken to," he rehearsed, his voice soft and so fragile even touching it could break its thin coat. His father's cold eyes were unmoved as he stared him down, disrobing his teeth in silent disappointment.

"And?" he demanded expectantly. Severus cleared his throat, his heart unmoving as he looked down at the table.

"Never talk back."

His father, recognizing full well that this answer was correct, was unimpressed regardless. Scorning down at the boy, he pointed to the gift annexed tightly to his grip.

"Let me see the price on that book."

Severus opened the inside cover, turning it to him from his seat. His father took an extensive, rattling breath, glaring at the tag under his finger and turning around and heading to the kitchen, a trail of pipe smoke weaving behind him. The redolence itself was comforting. If only it wasn't linked to the essence of his being, Severus would love the fragrance of a pipe. He'd bathe in it. Smoke it, even. He'd want it around him at all times. But it was bedaubed by the ink of his father, his name, the execrated name that Severus had inherited after his first. Severus Tobias Snape. How he wished he could erase the word. 

"And, boy," his father added quietly, standing in the doorway to quickly turn back to him. "Maybe you can find a spell in there to get your hair shorter. Don't want you looking so bent under my name."

Severus looked blankly back, though his muscles constricted beneath his skin. He felt like sublunary prey, curling back into his own skeleton whilst his father glared him down. 

"Might as well lean the other way while you're at it; find out Lily doesn't float your boat quite enough."

But this jibing was put to a jagged end as his mother piped up from her cleaning in the kitchen, her tone warning as she paralyzed him in the thick of his own lecture.

"Tobias."

His father grunted, rolling his eyes and turning to look at her side of the wall. "Oh, what now?"

His mother's voice echoed into Severus' ears, soothing his tense frame as she stood up for the life immured in the aviary of his chest that he deemed so endangered. "Don't you say such things to our boy."

His father pointed a thick finger at his nose, growling at her as he sat and gripped his book to his chest. "Look at him, Eileen!" he called back to her. "He's turning into a complete... Dorian!"

His mother took a sharp breath in from the other room, the silence displaying her expression as clearly as it would appear if it were in his frame of vision. Severus was well abreast of that quietude. He knew it all too well. It made an appearance every single godforsaken time. 

"And so what?" challenged his mother, and his fatal patriarch grimaced in receipt with the terror of a sailor on a keeling ship. 

"And so he's ruining our heritage," he replied artfully, as if it were the most obvious conclusion in the world. "Our entire bloodline, Eileen! He's the last one! No more children. Not a single one can save it."

"Oh, so he's ruining our bloodline? He is?" his mother yelled. "You're the one that diluted it!"

His father glared at her, his shoulders ankylosing in their position. "Maybe I wouldn't have done so if I had known before our wedding that you were a filthy hag!" he spat, and Eileen became quiet.

"Maybe I should have told you, then," she replied, her tone soft but the words torrid iron brands against his thick, yet burnable, skin.

"Yeah, maybe!" he hollered back, steaming like a bull against her branding iron. "And, oh, hey, why is it that you spent half our savings just to buy the boy a stupid book that the Ministry would cover for free the day he enters Year Six?"

Severus wreathed back in his seat, groveling in shame. Why was it that he was answerable to all their arrears? Why was it that he kept acquiring things from them in this way? He stood up, his shoulders hunched, his arms wrapped tightly around the spine of the book. His mother's voice cracked, and he could hear her drop something frustratedly into the sink.

"Because I love him, Tobias," she whispered back, causing Severus to slow his movement and stand still in place, feeling almost like he was going to cry.

"Well," his father argued, tightening his jaw. "Well..."

Severus felt his bones shatter inside his every limb as the snide old man acidulously spit out the one sentence he'd feared all along.

"Stop it."

Dust rested on the heavy molecules between them all, and Severus heard his mother take in a nettled breath. He knew she was going to cry. Somehow, though they were the only two segregated by the kitchen wall, he was so much closer to her than he was to the man seething right in front of his very view. He didn't know a thing about his mercurial, wholly flagitious father. But he knew seemingly everything about Eileen, who stood completely invisible to his line of sight. 

"No," his mother replied, and he felt his expression become assuaged by the caring feeling of protection. "No. He's my son. I'll never stop it. No matter what his hair looks like or how much money we spend on him or what kinds of people he may end up loving."

There was a beat, and it was awful. It didn't match the measure. It was out of tune.

"You won't stop? No? No matter what? No matter the fact that he's the biggest disappointment we could have conceivably ever harbored?" his father called. "Oh, I'll make you stop if it gets some sense into your head."

Severus was beginning to recall why he didn't like coming home; why he remained at Hogwarts for every birthday and every holiday, pinning his lost credence on only his mother's letters to keep him anchored to her. Whenever he showed up at home, there would be a fight. It was his fault for coming. His fault for making them quarrel. He should have never come.

But his mother's voice was strong as she replied, making him wonder if he needed to protect her at all. Whether he needed to leave for her sake alone rather than his own security was quite suddenly up in the air.

"No," she growled at his father, her strength permeating her every vowel. It stunned. It burned. It singed the seams of Tobias Snape's unraveling body. And, for a moment, it won.

But this was a wrong move.

Tobias Snape slunk from the doorway at such a speed that Severus barely knew it was happening. He heard his mother scream, followed by a loud whack as she was thrown against the wall. His father called out, hurling something violently in her direction as she wept disjointed pleas for him to stop. Severus countenanced his emotion, not wanting to look and not wanting to hear it. He wished his father were dead. He wished it were only Eileen Prince in that little beggared home. Just his mother.

Just his mother, meaning therefore that he should have never come. He shouldn't be here.

He gripped his book, carrying it timidly to the kitchen and putting in motion necessary provisions to give it back. He told himself that his father could then remit it; get the money back. His feet rooted themselves to the floor of the room, his eyes solidifying from flesh to ceramic as he saw his mother slump horridly against the wall as his father beat down on her, her shaking fingers inoculating her own face with a dinner tray.

"Take it, Severus!" she sobbed to him, meeting his eyes with her own and seeming to know he was leaving. She knew everything about him, and he found easement in this, regardless of how chagrined the situation itself became. "Take it with you! Please! It's the least you can do."

"Shut up, you mindless wench!" his father called, kicking her shin and making her scream. Severus' fingers locked around the book, his other hand gripping his wand from inside his robes. His heart fleeted. His breath trembled like the plates of the Earth.

His mother saw his hand move, her eyes widening in fear. "Sevie, no—"

But he'd already pointed it at his father, casting a hard blow at his ear and levying the only maleficent roots he could remember from the book he read about Latin. They must be able to do something. There must be some sort of effect. There was bound to be.

"Sectumsempra!" he called tightly, hopefully, and what came was the terrible sound of tearing skin.

With horror, he moved his wand and watched as his father's ear was split into multiple rent pieces, parts of it falling to the floor with thick thuds as he screamed out and bled from the side of his head. Eileen gasped in trepidation, looking over at her son and knowing he had it coming for him.

"Severus!" she screamed, standing up while she still had time and handing him one more small box, forcing him towards the door. "Go! Go!"

Severus careered outside, giving her one last look and trying to hide the tears pricking at the edges of his vision. His words were rushed; uncertain.

"I love you, mum."

His mother seemed to crumble at the locution, her lip quivering as she sulked back.

"I love you, too," she whispered. "And happy birthday."

He scoffed, biting back tears. A happy birthday indeed.

The door shut in his face.

That was the last time Severus Snape said the words "I love you" to anyone. Taking a shaking breath, he vowed that nobody would ever deserve it to the degree his mother did. The words were reserved for her alone. Not his friends, or his family, not Lily, and especially not his father. Unless to her, he made a note to never utter them again.

He heard muffled screams behind him as he turned away and sprinted into the blizzard outside, his wand and his gifts set tightly in his arm. Running until he couldn't locomote any longer, he sat stagnant at the only dry space on the road he could find, curling up into a ball and shivering in the circumpolar air.

He sat there for a long time, waiting quiescently until he was found by the Knight Bus, on which he sat and opened his second gift. He accorded only silence to the conveyance, discarding the box on the floor and deciding that the bus itself was already so messy that they likely wouldn't mind.

The second gift was a fountain pen, a profoundly pulchritudinous blue, accented by gold wire and a deep red nib. Staring down at it in complete allurement, he opened to the beginning page of his new book, scribbling down his first note. His heart hissed as he wrote, intending to make it clear that he wanted nothing to do with his father. He wanted to regard himself as only his mother's child from this point on. And, although only half of his blood was her own, he refused to mention the vicious old man in any of it.

This book, he scribbled furiously in the front cover, is property of the Half-Blood Prince.

Opening now to a random page in the middle of it, he made a note out of the way of the text, writing it down just to make sure he'd remember it later.

Sectumsempra, he scrawled, his lips quivering in anger. His teeth chattered, and he couldn't fully ascertain whether it was from the emotion or the temperature. Giving a quick sniff of insincere detachment, he completed his note just cryptically enough so only he could remember its purpose:

For enemies.

He sets his pen down on his desk, the soft candlelight of his office deliquescing against the pale, malnourished skin of his fingers. He's written a letter, transcribing an address off of the business card from Remus Lupin in the upper lefthand apex. The card itself he's placed back in his front left chest pocket, knowing it'll be easy to find if ever he needs it again.

Sending an owl off with the notice, he takes a volant inhalation and stands up, withdrawing from his quarters and cavorting down the hall and up the stairs, deciding to clear his head.

This is something he hadn't the ascendancy to do until now. Such an entrechat through the halls of this school after dark is a novelty that he now possesses. He finds it enfranchising to be able to do this without it violating any terms of their academic jurisprudence, although there's no denying that it was equally unfettering doing it as a student when it was still very much against the rules.

But now, wandering the halls, admiring the statues and the art, taking in the silent penumbras of each individual pillar and the soft blue light of the almost-full moon, he nearly feels he's in charge of the concept of time itself. Knowing that he can be found out of bed and not be ridiculed or questioned, to be left alone to think and study the walls, is like finding solace in a January blizzard. Like stepping onto a bus after a family dispute. Like being free from restriction. Like being free from his father.

He thinks back to that day again, reminding himself that, for all he knows, the man is pushing up daisies. Because people don't just disappear. When they do, they've either slain or been slain. And his father, though callous, was too much of a coward to do such a thing as kill. And his mother, although strong enough, was always far too good.

He remembers their names in the paper. How they were illustrated so euphemistically as the lovely little perfectly-happy couple that was enigmatically nowhere to be found. The pair of people that were so desperately in love that they hadn't had a problem with one another in their lives. The duplet so damn inseparable that "it's such a shock that either of them are missing". All bullshit, of course. Every last weeping paragraph. 

He remembers scoffing at the headlines, sitting in Dumbledore's office after being sent in by Slughorn, who had heard the news with a reaction far more decent than his own. He remembers being told in an exceedingly careful tone that not a single person could locate his parents. He was asked if he was okay. And, worryingly, the answer was a genuine and purely casual yes.

He remembers writing in the book from his mother after requesting to return to class, almost grateful for the news. Wherever she was, alive or not, it was better than home.

Snape's eyes follow the curved dips in the wall, sculpted so intricately those so many years ago, watching the shadows dance within each meticulous fold. This is something he values about being allowed in the halls at night. He now has time to see and furthermore vet the opulent trimmings and finery of them when lit by darkness, which shows a whole different side of the structure. It's one he values immensely, looking over its beauteousness and artisanship, watching the dark blend into the pale. It's never this lovely when it's touched by the sun. Not in the least. Never at all.

He reaches out to touch the ashlar, the light shade of it accented aesthetically by the moon. His fingers trail along the ancient grout, his own lonely figure casting a crepuscular outline against the wall and floor below. It's all so smooth, so guilelessly peerless. Every tiny aspect of this building is absolutely without flaw, with its chips and scratches and fragmented pieces missing in patterns where they're unkempt. Even the foibles look as though they're meant to be there; like they're crucial to the wonder of the school. And perhaps they are.

Turning around and looking outside at the bright, round moon, he takes a deep breath in, closing his eyes and letting it wash over him. He steadies his heartbeat, listening closely to its rhythmic patterns, its pat-pat, pat-pat against the fabric of his own vest. Still so lively. Still pumping the same blood through the same veins. Though every day, he hardens more and more to the world around him, the drumming of his own pulse reminds him that he's still the same person. He'll always be the same person.

And why is this an unquiet thought? Why does this make him uneasy? Unsure? Uncomfortable in his own shell?

There must be some element, something you could find only by excavating deep into the layers and trenches of his very abdomen, that he doesn't want himself to espy. Something about his father, perhaps, or something about himself. Or perhaps it's both, the ingredient rooted within the thick stalagmites of repression or the multitudinous stalactites of insincerity, perhaps touching the tip of each, connecting them ceiling-to-floor by means of its own execrable mass and taking from each of their qualities. He isn't sure what this mass is. Nevertheless, he knows it's there.

He walks back down the hall in the direction he came, hurrying down the stairs and almost heading straight through the doorway to the outdoor wall-walk, but he stops himself, turning back and going down the separate winding staircase to the dungeons. His feet guide him back to his room, where he anticipates the riposte to his letter. It shouldn't be long now.

Deciding to deflect himself with anything he can, he turns to the expanse of his room, taking out his wand and trying the spell again. He thinks of the book. He thinks of his mother. He thinks of his father and his home and his birthday. He wishes he could only think of the book.

"Delocaponum," he whispers to the silent, unhearing darkness he's folded between.

A pen descends onto his desk.

He turns to look at it, his eyes twisting inside his head as he realizes quite precisely what it is.

It's a fountain pen. It's old and abraded, but still a bewitching deep blue. A gold wire is wound around the end, leading to the scarlet-gleaming nib. With a sharp breath in, he picks it up, brushing off the sand and dirt it's ridden with and giving it minutes of close examination.

It's his pen. The pen from his mother.

His throat tightening, he sits wanly down in his own chair, turning it over and over in his fingers with the realization that, after all this time, he's finally been able to acquire an object that belongs to him. An object that he knows. An object that is so unbearably close to the one he's been scrounging for.

What is he doing right?

He can barely even operate enough to cogitate about it. A bit of his mother, a chapter of his past, is held entirely in this dilapidated, scratched utensil. He can barely manage the reality on its own.

It's untenable how much of one's life can be held inside such an object. As the pen in Dumbledore's office held his future, the one he holds now is his own past, weighted just as heavily with encounters he's left behind. But it's strange that the past alters you more than what is to come, as he's still plagued by his own father but not at all plagued by the thought of his own eventual death, which, axiomatically, is destined to be more painful, more fatal. It always is, with everyone. It's strange that he fears that future less. It's strange that Albus' pen gave him the feeling of exhilaration and speed, as this one gives him the feeling of consuming dread and grim, heart-twisting loss, though this is the one he's deserted to shrivel in the caverns of his far-gone past.

He tosses it to the side, not wanting to look at it. The fact that it's here at all is unthinkable in and of itself. Something he just did, whatever it was, must have been a step in the right direction. The spell almost worked. He's so close. He can feel it.

Taking out his wand again, he remains seated as he casts the spell once again into his abstruse and brooding room.

"Delocaponum."

This time around proves to be less fruitful. A small golden spoon lands on his desk; one he's more than sure he hasn't ever possessed. He scoffs at it, grabbing its small frame and flinging it to one of his empty shelves alongside the other unfructuous items he's collected over the weeks, leaving only the pen on his desk, sitting in all its splendor, so present, so regardlessly here.

Why?

Perhaps the reason it came to him is because it's something he vividly remembers.

But, no, that can't be it. He wrote the spell to go against Accio in that regard. He wrote it to not need a physical description or a vision or a memory. Just a cogent premeditation.

He stands up, tucking his wand back into his pocket and thwarting the clement candlelight with a quick blow of air. Stepping into the hallway and locking his own door, he heads a bit further to the entrance of the Potions classroom, closing it sotto voce so as to not rouse any of the Slytherins down the hall. He hears accustomed footsteps to his left, and he doesn't have to look up to know that his letter has finally been answered.

"Good evening, Lupin."

Remus, who has stopped in his steps just to Severus' side, remains calmly idyllic as he watches him lock his doors. "You sent for me."

"I did," Snape replies casually, tucking the key into one of the pockets inside his robes and heading to the stairs again, Lupin trailing evenly behind. "I hope you don't have anything crucial happening in the morning."

Remus tethers together his brows, giving Severus a long look. "Why?" he asks quickly, his footsteps rushed as he skips stairs, each foot crossing two at a time as he keeps up with Snape's quick steps up every individual one. "What are we doing?"

Severus feels the moonlight hit the left side of his face as they reach the top of the dungeon stairs, heading straight for the long doors leading outside. Detonating his way through them, he leads the path into the wall-walk, hurrying across it in the direction of the nearest ingress. 

"We're finding our precious Horace Slughorn," he replies as Remus keeps so easily with his pace.

"In the middle of the night?" Lupin questions, and Snape halts in his steps to turn to him, the tail of his robes twirling alongside his maneuvering stature and thrashing as they cascade against his still legs. The moon lights the textures of both their faces, pitching over their skin, making them appear younger — begetting them to look painless and lively and as if they've never been plagued by anything in their theatrically tragic lives.

"Is there a problem?" Severus questions, his beguiled gaze following the smoothness of Lupin's mien, noticing almost scientifically how his eyes light up only slightly at the words.

Remus offers a scant, exiguous smirk, pursing his lips as he shakes his head, turning down to his feet and emanating rays of the sleeping sun. "Well, no," he decides, facing Snape's eyes again as he lifts his head back up. He looks so youthful now, so full of his old life, almost as if awaiting one of his archetypal schoolboy gambados and grade-level antics. He, as well, has chosen tonight to reflect his personal times of old, though his do seem to sit more hospitably on his shoulders. "Not in the least."

Severus smirks, his blood pulsing quickly through him as he notes that of course Remus would reply this way. The man has never been averse to any sort of game in any sense. Any thrilling chase or foolish joke is up his street of adroitness and pastime on any day, any time, living any hour or age. And this is one thing that Snape can get behind. This is something about Remus Lupin that he can venerate.

"Follow me," he instructs now, bounding across the bridge and inside the school again, tearing their way through halls and staircases to the nearest exit he can reach. He senses Lupin just a few steps behind, not at all pressurized by this speed. In fact, Remus seems to feel as if this is merely a lackadaisical stroll, his tall figure easily crossing the quick lengths at which Severus is stepping with so much more effort. They reach the bridge of the front entrance, the moon bright as it lights their way across it and out of school grounds. This light they're involved in, the shadows it casts that stage a play they're forced to act, reminds Severus of something else. A bottle. A very specific one. The one that's lead to Remus being next to him at this moment in the first place.

"I assume," he begins, picking up the pace as they reach the halfway point of the passageway, "that you've been administering the potion of which I provided you?"

Remus nods, looking anxiously up at the rounding moon. "I have been, yes," he replies. "Just a few days now. All this discomfort will come to full fruition."

Severus squints at him, turning his head to abruptly meet his eyes. "Discomfort? Are you meaning to tell me, Lupin, that you're in torment as we speak?"

"Why, yes," Lupin replies, tipping his head slightly to the side. "Did you not know? The whole week is a drag. Of course, it's all manageable up until, well, you know."

Snape falters, looking out ahead of them and beginning, strangely, to reassess his own impassioned antics.

"We can..." He clears his throat. "We can... slow down, if necessary."

"Oh," Remus reacts, and Severus now pays just enough attention to take notice of an attenuate limp in his gait, a subtle tightness in his shoulders, a faded tautness of his teeth against themselves. "That would be... very accommodating of you."

Snape slows down, toning with Lupin's casual saunter as he keeps his eyes fixed on the walk ahead of them. "Think nothing of it," he replies. "Nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing special. Don't let a single indulgent pronouncement cross your overly-trusting mind."

Remus merely smiles, shaking his head and focusing on the ground. They've reached the end of the passage now, their feet harboring on lone grass as they cross over and out of the school demesne. They stop, and Severus takes the small address of Horace Slughorn out of its locus in his pocket, handing it over to his accomplice between his first and middle finger. Lupin seizes the writing, assessing it sedulously as Snape gives a short explanation.

"I'd assume you would have a basic sense of where this address may be," he says as Lupin hands the paper back, "considering you've done so much... running from yourself."

"Ah— exploring," Remus ameliorates, giving a small nod. "I think I can find that, yes. We may need to spend a while looking for the house itself, but I know the area."

"Knowing the area is something deemed necessary only when you're running," Snape replies less-than-understatedly. "If you were merely exploring, you wouldn't have the faintest idea where this is. Bilbo Baggins wouldn't be able to tell you how exactly to find Riven—"

"Rivendell, yes," Lupin interrupts, seeming to understand fully his reference to Muggle literature, "but that's a children's book."

"Strange, isn't it," Severus utters softly, his words frost against the chilled grass beneath them, "that you've spent so long hiding the verisimilitude of your own being from the general public, but all this does is develop their qualms for you further? You can't run from yourself, Remus. An attempt is like brewing ale out of a single leaf of parsley."

Remus gives him a wearisome look, not electing anything to say.

"I, um..." He takes a breath, turning slightly away. "Point being, Severus," he redirects with a short chuckle, "I know how to find this precious address of yours. Why don't you grab onto my shoulder?"

Severus begrudgingly heeds his counseling, hesitantly reaching out and wrapping his fingers over the soft fabric of his dark yellow vest. He feels guarded, outreaching his arm and abutting someone like this. It's something he doesn't like to let himself often do. But this, after he's coercing himself into doing it, isn't so acridly heinous as he'd expected. It's mellow. It's soft. Though he's only doing it so that he can transport to wherever it is that Remus is about to bring them, the act is warming to them both. It's unspoken, silent. They hear the wind smile at their quietude.

"Hang on tight," Lupin advises. Snape nods, his thumb forcing itself a bit harder into the back of his shoulder, softly enough where he knows it won't make his stretching muscles any sorer than they're already hurting, and takes a long breath in.

The weapon is triggered. The bugles sound. The wolf darts and the horses follow, and, in the deep November leaves, the wind circling and turning over and over with each docile sigh of the silhouetted gray clouds, the chase begins.

The dark mustard vest disappears, and the black cloak with it.

All that's left behind is a swish of air, the wind displacing the lost matter as they leave only empty space in their wake. All that moves is another leaf, gyrating over in the breeze with the same color as Remus Lupin's entire closet. All that exists now is a pen, a broken spell, a mending past, and boxes and boxes of memories. All that's gone is gone.

And, life be forgiving, this will forever remain.


	10. {𝐜𝚘𝚖𝚙𝚘𝚗𝚎𝚗𝚝 𝐭𝚠𝚘   »   𝐟𝚕𝚞𝚡𝚠𝚎𝚎𝚍}

< 1 MONTH, 5 DAYS >

Earlier that day, Severus Snape remembered that he was fermenting a potion, and additionally that he had, by some morally-forsaking means, forgotten about it completely.

He also remembered that he had left it in the back corner of Rubeus Hagrid's cupboard, and that, furthermore, the man barely left that little old shack, so getting his hands on it now was a near inutile thought. Scolding himself for not being clever enough to take the vial with him on the night he put it there, he closed his eyes and necessitated himself to push remorse aside and focus on an actual stratagem. 

He knew it wasn't even-handed to blame himself; he had been out of sorts in the moment. One can never think straight when outstripped by a veiling passion, and is why people fall in love and marry one another. It's why they divorce them months later and move to another country for two years before coming to the full realization that the government is atrocious and they never should have left or gotten a divorce or gotten married and they never should have fallen in love.

Things like this were why Severus so often plighted to never give in to feeling. Yet still, wound up in the intense cyclone of his hidden personal experiences, was the downtrodden fact that this promise would never be fulfilled. It would be broken every time. Because a wall can never keep emotion out; it'll just keep it in. Things will always be felt, regardless of what anyone attempts to block from happening, and he knew this very well.

So he sat in the morning windowlight one month following the death of Lily Evans Potter, very much wallowing in it, because this reality of feeling was ineludible. It was an anniversary of sorts. Thirty days since he lost her. Thirty days of sleepless nights — although he was commonly trammeled by those anyway — and thirty days of reliving the past, not regarding that he knew fully well it was far behind him and it would be healthiest to leave it there.

"It would be healthiest." He scoffed at the thought.

Because since when had he owned a healthy state of mental being? Since when had he gone out of his way to warrant the prevention or jurisdiction of utter dysfunction when it'd aided him through each wrenched and knotted path; helped him over every thorn? If anything, he should've been doing exactly the same thing as he always had: pretending just convincingly enough on the outside so that nobody had the suspicion nor desire to look in.

He neutralized his expression. His mask of indifference slipped over each and every pore, though inside his gut twisted all the same. At least now nobody would know. He would prevent them from being able to tell. Even when looking into a mirror, he intended for the façade to be so seamless that even his own head would be tricked into surmising that nothing was all he felt.

Strange thing, making yourself believe you're something you aren't. The greatest achievement that manipulation could ever dream of touching. So completely unattainable to the general public. Even to him. It was something he hadn't yet reached. Something he knew he might never do.

Perhaps he couldn't sidestep the reality of feeling misplaced, or threnodic, or guilty. But he could still decline failure. He could still dodge the contrition of an unperformed task.

He thundered outside and down the steep hill that his life, reborn in all its disconsolate luster, sat upon, careening over the frost-bitten grass as the wind blew his cloak behind him. His tight black boots, laced and glossy, contrasted roughly against the yellow of each plant's blade, the edge of his separated heel digging into the chilled dirt surrounding their roots. He gouged the soil with his very feet, each step more obdurate than the last as he made his way to pick up a vial from Hagrid's cupboard.

The problem with this was that he had no idea how to do it without somehow admitting that he broke into his home and splintered his window to put it there. And he already wasn't on the best terms with Rubeus; in fact, he barely knew the man at all. Though he spoke very little to everyone, Severus spoke likely the least to him. He didn't want to base their whole acquaintanceship on demolition and infraction of property. In this particular case, he decided it was likely best to base it on lies.

This, of course, never leads to a real friendship. A relationship of prevarication is just as effective and legitimate as a pail made of paper or a mask of translucent glass. But Hagrid wasn't a man that Snape could see himself wanting a legitimate connection to, so he found this to not be a problem. They weren't analogous nor contrastive enough for it to lead to anything other than all that was flat and dry.

So, in the grand scheme of things, this likely wouldn't be something that carried any consequences. He was sure Rubeus himself would concede, so he didn't humble himself as he trod atop his raised concrete step and knocked on the door; his only intention, naturally, being to grab the potion and leave (he, in addition, was not planning on ever returning to the small home for the rest of his life if he could help it, and help it he could).

Hagrid opened the door with a peaceable slowness about him, looking terribly taken aback as he realized who it was that was waiting stiffly outside it. His bushy eyebrows knitted together as he stood, back straight, each hand in a fist on his hips. His smile itself was undeservingly warm.

"Well, if it isn't Professor Snape!" he burst out — although Severus hypothesized that the immense volume of the words weren't at all intentional but rather fueled by his own surprise — rumbling backwards and motioning with his arm to his small home. "Come right on in. I've got tea if you're up for that sort o' thing. Dumbledore's said himself you like it with cream and sugar."

Severus stepped slowly through the door, giving a breath of disarranged intrigue. "He appears," he replied, "to have said this himself to... many people."

"Oh, he doesn't shut up about you," Rubeus chortled, taking the kettle in his large hand and pouring tea daintily into his own metal cups. "He loves new recruits, especially when they're young blood. Respects the young 'uns, he does. Finds 'em advantaged." He motioned to a chair, and Severus obligingly sat.

"Advantaged," he echoed, the word bleached against the sharp edges of his own bladed teeth.

"Strange, innit?" Hagrid remarked, handing over a steaming serving of sweet black tea, dropping a small pitcher of milk on the table between them and sitting on the opposite side. "Comin' from someone who's wiser and darn older than either of us'll ever be, he sure has a weak spot for the fresh souls. Respects 'em almost as much as he respects himself. As they respect him."

"A symbiotic relationship, clearly," Severus replied. "Those can be profoundly recherché."

Rubeus wasn't at all familiar with two of the just-mentioned words, but he commented only on one of them.

"Symbiotic?" he scoffed with a rock back in his seat. "The bloody hell's that mean?"

Snape took an ample sip of the tea, staring him down as he remembered that the term was from his Muggle books and that anyone with clean blood and spotless DNA — another Muggle term — wouldn't know it.

"Convenient. Equitable. A fair trade," he explained. "Mutually beneficial."

Hagrid looked with pressed lips at his own tea. "Coulda just said that instead."

This was quickly remonstrated against.

"Such mundanity is something I'm keen on not playing with. I've seen how you live," Snape retorted casually. "Why overuse clichés when you can replace them with words that nobody understands? All the entertainment comes from watching them pretend to know what you're talking about. So terribly... frabjous."

Rubeus took a breath. "Right."

Severus stood to his feet, pacing slowly around the room and hindering affronts as his eyes glissaded over the grime and dust on every surface. The space was so cluttered that it was a miracle the half-giant could even fit in the already-small area. 

"Endearing," he wrung forcibly from his own throat, his expression convincing but his tone not playing the part. Hagrid gave a brief, polite nod before changing the subject.

"Oh, before I forget," he said, standing up and limping heavily to the next room over, "you left your potion here. Might wanna take that on your way out, I reckon."

Out of all the things he thought himself prepared for, comprising of the mendacity and the misleading all the way to the distractions and eventual repossessing of the bottle, never at all had Severus Snape expected this to be the final outcome. Not in the least. It shocked him. Terrified him, the unknown did. Absolutely sickened his every bone; made anemic his every cell of blood.

He gripped the edge of the kitchen counter, anxiety creeping up his throat. He spoke in a choked whisper, his bony fingers turning paler than they already were as they cleaved to the edge like one would clutch together the edges of a fresh wound. "Sorry?"

"You don't remember the potion you left in my cupboard the night you split my window frame?" Rubeus marveled at him as he dug through his stuffed cupboards. "Oh, come on. Dumbledore told me all about it."

Severus took a moment to edify his own shock, closing his eyes for an instant of perturbed discomposure and breathing in as he coaxed it to turn to relief.

"Albus... has told you about many things. It seems," Snape responded finally with a sheepish, malcontent tone, highly more uncomfortable at the mention of the window, "that every living organism in the general area knows more about me than even I am deemed to understand."

This was a daunting thought, the world around him knowing his person with more depth than he knew himself. Most people would find this a statement of interest. But Hagrid barely absorbed the statement as he reached back and clasped his grip around the old potion, stepping back into the kitchen with a look of satisfaction about his lively expression.

"Here y'are," he said jovially, plopping the closed jar in Severus' weak hand. "And don't you worry about the window, on that note. Dumbledore fixed it himself as soon as he told me."

Snape slowly closed his fingers around the staunch glass vial. Giving Hagrid one last nod, he stepped backwards without anything to say — there were no prodigious vocables he could possibly select to comprehensively display how he was feeling about this in a way that was at all accurate. He couldn't do it if his life depended on it (good thing it didn't) — and turned quickly to the door. He left, leaving behind his tea and all conversation that had already been administered in that tiny little house.

The wind flagellating against his skin with the vigor of his father's belt, throwing his hair back out of his face as he stepped out, Severus briefly closed his eyes against it. Taking a long breath in and not knowing precisely if that went better or worse than planned, he set off up the hill again, heading back into the school and slowly dragging himself to his room. Each step was more distant to his own hearing. Each footfall he noticed less than the last.

He arrived in his own quarters before he knew he'd even made it inside. He stood shivering against the shock of sudden heat, his spine twitching as it became so rapidly warmed. He paid no interest to it. Such a reaction didn't merit his time. Not when he had things to do and books to chase after. Not when he had a person to preserve.

Standing the potion upright on his desk, he quickly retrieved a few leaves from his classroom next door, squeezing them into the concoction in his vial before tearing the dried remnants into small pieces and dropping them in as well. Whisking it all efficiently into the water, he mindlessly nominated a pen from his drawer and added to his notes, wondering if this was even at all moral.

His intention, of course, was to keep Lily with him for as long as he could, and in every possible way. He wanted to hear her. See her. He wanted to be able to feel the snagged threads of her sweaters, to smell the deep scent of the wool. But what if this wasn't the right way to do it?

He pushed away the thought, scribbling against the parchment below him with a small sigh.

Fluxweed, he added, for healing.

He set the pen down, securing the vial shut and placing it with his notes on one of his tenantless shelves. 

Was this even worth it? Did he even care enough for it to be a consummating use of time?

He wondered if he even wanted to continue this project of his when there were so many more things to do, like, for example, finding Horace Slughorn so he could teach a damned thing, or—

...Oh.

A rivet aligned his own head then. He looked up at the dark room around him, feeling so abruptly light within it.

Finding Horace Slughorn.

That was something he could not ever rebate the gravity of. Something he could work extensively to take care of and never once doubt.

As the midday air transuded into the damp dungeon walls, he decided to take action on this immediately. He had time. He had determination. He knew it was best to start while these were still in effect. Because it couldn't be too hard to find a man so cowardly that he could be spotted in a room full to the edges of fearful people. It wouldn't take too long to espy a dead rose in a bouquet of wilted pansies. All he needed was some time, some fleetness, some intension, and—

He paused, his shoulders sinking as he realized that he couldn't do this on his own.

He needed an accomplice. And, unfortunately, he knew of the perfect one. 

He needed someone who knew their way around every rule, every social construct, every watchful eye. Someone so careless that they became obsessively careful to keep it that way. A living, breathing, hopelessly paradoxical excuse for a man.

And, of course, he had made a deal with him anyway. Inviting Remus Lupin was the only decent thing to do. And Snape, bearing a roulette table worth of dolorous life facts, still considered himself decent enough to hold to it.

He picked up his pen again.


	11. 𝙸𝚇     >>     𝙷𝙾𝚁𝙰𝙲𝙴’𝚂 𝙷𝙾𝚄𝚂𝙴

< 1 MONTH, 5 DAYS >

Their bodies swirling into vision like torn fabric in a bowl of boiling water, the imperishable cotton of their vests blending in better with the cold night street than an artist could be with brushes and an easel in a local conservatory, two figures warp themselves onto the darkly-lit exurban avenue. 

One, presumably, is Remus Lupin, his eyes glazed over with the slight disorienting pain of stretching bones, his young physiognomy aglow in the frozen lamplight. In this environment, even his scars look silken as they lay vertically on his cheeks and across his softened nose. Or perhaps it's his own figure — his stance, his attitude under the grilling face of fate — that makes it seem safer; less malignant. Because he himself is velvet, from the top of his strong shoulders to the tips of his leather-shoed toes, and this softness is contagious, even to pain. Even to scars he put there himself.

The second man, clutching his shoulder with a starveling, malnourished hand and watching his expression with guarded eyes, is Professor Severus Snape, who has no idea where he is or what exactly to do now that he's here. He stands unmoving, convalescing from the exhausting trip to where they stand, his muscles feeling stretched and out-of-place (not unlike how the rest of him always tends to be). Contrasting from the arm he's clinging so absentmindedly to, he's not velvety at all. There isn't a single aspect of his form that bears a curve or a rounded edge. Everything about his person is thin, acute and apical, all of his physical attributes and the clothes covering them coming to some sort of eventual point.

It's a wonder that, with all the knifelike traits he bears on his breakable, visible bones, the only injuries on the man he's clasping so tightly to have been put there by his own benign fingernails. It's a miracle that Snape hasn't yet hurt him so deeply as to plant another mark on the bridge of his nose that he hasn't put there himself. 

In fact, Severus hasn't even come close. Though his fingers themselves are daggers, there exists a sort of tenderness to them, at least, when they're resting on the shoulder of Remus Lupin, a man he almost feels is safe to trust. There's a bond of respect rooted there, entwining with the seeds of mutual understanding until the two form a whole new breed of fern, unfurling from its sleeping position in the frozen earth and surrounding them in a silent dome of peaceful, relenting coexistence.

In all the growth and change they've experienced in the last month alone, this fact of finally being able to tolerate one another, let alone be even a bit friendlier than usual, is one of the biggest steps in their acquaintanceship either of them feels they've yet taken. And out of all the outcomes so far that they've been the reason for, this one is easily the most significant.

It's difficult to live with a man of your regretted past. It's near impossible to let yourself heal enough to grow accustomed to his constant presence. 

The two young men come to realize they've just accomplished both.

Snape's hand is slow and calculated as it leaves Lupin's shoulder, falling gently to his side as he looks out on the dim December street. The chilled air reaching even the deepest marrow of his skeleton, he folds his arms together and keeps his robes draped theatrically over them, stiffening his posture as he evaluates the street around where they stand.

"Seems Slughorn's salary was exponentially more significant than that of my own," he remarks passively at the large gated homes on either side of them. "Curious, considering I now hold his exact same position."

"Curious indeed," Lupin replies airily, his breath fogging up in the cold, gentle wind. "Perhaps you're just bad at your job." He gives a sideways smirk to his company, who brushes it off with a quick remark.

"It might be more reasonable to focus on the fact that an occupation is something I actually maintain, Lupin," Severus replies backhandedly, giving him a fittingly-pointed sideways glance, "rather than living off of my fathers' wages in a cottage I don't even own."

Remus pauses, almost impressed that Severus is able to piece that fun fact about him together at all, before vaulting himself into another phlegmatic retort. "At least my father cares about me," he stabs, though his eyes smirk, his gaze lighthearted as it rests on Snape's own.

Severus narrows his eyes in receipt, turning back toward the road and snatching the small address out of the pocket of his robes. Changing the subject, surprised at his loss for words in such a battle of wit and tongue, he reads off the words with a sudden eagerness to find the blasted house.

"The number is forty-seven," he relays, slipping the paper back into his pocket as Remus scans the surrounding homes.

"This street's all twenties," he replies, motioning for them to walk with a tilt of his head and beginning to travel forward. "It'll be likely a block down, I'd imagine."

Snape keeps by his side as they walk, glad that Lupin's apparation was so accurate as to land them both on the correct street, shivering slightly as he pulls his robes tighter around him. Remus himself doesn't seem to be so affected by the cold, his gait even and unbothered the way it is. But he's always even and unbothered, regardless of weather. So it's quite possible he's just as frozen, just as uncomfortable in the chill, but one would never know it. Not with him.

"I really shouldn't joke about your father, though. I..." Remus sighs as he gives himself a mental scolding, tucking his hands into the pockets of his acorn-colored coat. "I'm not thinking clearly. That's what the cycle does to my head. Whenever the full moon approaches, I... I apologize."

"Remus," Snape replies divertingly, keeping his gaze zeroed in on each and every house number they walk past. "My father is a joke. Pointing out such an obscene reality is only honest."

He gives him a blank look, one that instantiates with complete clarity that he means this with utmost candor. The wind adds to it a chill that it didn't originally possess.

"Do you value disrespect over empathy, Severus?" Lupin questions casually, the tip of his nose accessorized by an opaque layer of pink as it grows colder under the air around it.

Snape considers this, quiet as they walk along the side of the residential road, the pointed toes of his boots scuffling against the leaves that have fallen beneath them. "No," he replies. "What's absolutely most important over emotion in any given situation is transparency. The act of being genuine in the face of falsehood, not cowering under the weighted notion of maddening the serpentine culture around you due to a mere expression of the self. Showing one's true thoughts whether or not they're accepted by the small-minded heads around them."

Lupin, as he does, accepts this as soon as it's said, his stringent limp seeming to worsen the longer they walk. "It can certainly be good to see things that way," he resolves, "in the sense that you understand that not everybody can be pleased with you. Then you don't long for it, you know, the instant gratification of conflict's sweet absence. One with such a mindset knows in that situation that complete popularity is impossible, and so it is accepted."

"Mm," Severus hums in agreement as they cross a small, idle intersection and look upon all the sleeping homes, each door now labeled a number beginning with three.

"But don't you think kindness is just as fair?" Remus affixes, reading the addresses just as pedantically as he thinks aloud. "If you're unbothered by what the world thinks of you, shouldn't there still be a syllabus for what you think of yourself? Your own personal expectations? Are you not concerned with being a good man just for the sake of knowing that such is something you are?"

Severus spots the home labeled forty-seven, leading the way across the street as he approaches the question he's just been cannonaded with. Quoting something he learned from his childhood Latin books, he opens Horace Slughorn's front gate and walks cautiously through.

"'Exigo a me non ut optimus par sim sed ut malis melior,'" he recites, standing still on the front walkway as Remus follows him into the yard. "Seneca the Younger: 'I require myself not to be equal to the best, but better than the bad.'"

"I'm familiar," is the only thing Remus says in return.

"Meaning I don't care about false kindness, Remus, just as you don't care about forced honesty. You'd rather tell a white lie to keep from hurting someone, while I'd rather tell the truth to keep from hurting those around that someone." Severus steps up to the front door, giving it two quick knocks and stepping back to wait next to Lupin. "Our definitions of what it means to be a good man are far from one another's borders."

"On the contrary," Remus replies, "your explanation proves that both of us are considered by ourselves to be good men because of our focus on not hurting someone. So I'd argue that, in contrast, our definitions are as close together as they can possibly be. Our definitions are — and don't you try to deny this, now — virtually the same."

Snape gives him a long look, intrigued, almost, the vivid color in the vast depth of the conversation staggering him in a way that speaking with others seldom tends to do. The ideas expressed are far from black-and-white. The words spoken are unclear, the opinions intersecting just as nimbly as they divagate. It's an argument he can't win, and it's not often that he doesn't avow pre-eminence over a dispute.

"I think you talk too much," he bites back finally, though he can't make it sound as scornful as he wants it to. He turns back to the door numbered forty-seven and ignores Lupin's endearing little chuckle.

"Well, I think," Remus replies, motioning to the empty driveway connected to the lot, "that Slughorn isn't home."

And he's likely right. The house in front of them remains still. No lights grace its windows, no movement escapes its skeleton. It looks so abandoned, so vacant, like a lost child. Uncared for. Forgotten. Here, but so gone.

Remus flips open the lid of Horace's letterbox, hung to the left of the door by a rusted metal hook, pulling out a stack of envelopes and filing through them with his first and middle finger.

"Yeah, look here," he says as he sets one of the letters into Snape's fingers, pointing to the postal stamp in the corner. "It's the most recent one. Second November. He probably up and left on—" He pauses, painfully, but only briefly— "...at the end of October."

Severus snatches the letters out of Remus' grip, wedging them back into the letterbox with as much vivacity as he can contrive. No matter how irritated at Slughorn he is, it's never decent to look through someone's mail for no good purpose. It's an invasion, and privacy is something most important to him, regardless of whose it is.

Closing the lid of the metal box and letting his fingers trail over the edge of the frame, he takes their findings all into account. "So..." he replies, quiet and careful with his decision of words. "So we can—"

"—break in, yes," Lupin suggests with an eager interjection, and Snape whips sideways to glare at him with a quick swish of his cloak.

"We can assume, you incredible brainbox, that's he's away," he ameliorates, spitting the words with such hesitant force that one would guess they've been getting caught between his teeth. "We're not in a wizard community anymore. Breaking and entering is a serious Muggle offense."

"Aha," Lupin replies, pointing a playful finger at the tip of Snape's nose, "but only if they catch you doing it." He caps off the sentence with an amused smirk, reaching for his wand in attempt to undo the lock on the front door.

"It may be a stretch, because it's bloody hard to outdo your anarchic past," Severus hisses as the lock gives a subtle, assuring click, "but I think this is the stupidest idea you've had yet."

However, as the door swings open, Snape is the first one to place his foot inside, crossing through into the front room of Horace Slughorn's deserted home with a manner of elfish mischief about the extreme flow of his movement. This doesn't go unnoticed by Remus, who raises a brow at the irony.

"Well, I think," he replies, loping behind in his trail with a circumspect peek inside, "that you don't always say what you mean."

He steps in after him, the two now beleaguered by the bleak absence of life and the dark grey smell of dust. Severus feels Remus shifting next to him, his own back stiffening in response — although he isn't sure why — in the black air they're wrapped between.

"Lumos," whispers Remus, and his wand lights up at the end, shining the way through the front entrance as they creep larghetto into the living room.

It looks exactly like Severus imagined it would, displaying the outdated ideals in his outdated personal library, his old-fashioned beliefs in his old-fashioned wallpaper. His things are bestrewn, acrimonious, fearful, just like Slughorn has always been. Strange that fearfulness often is linked to age. Strange how easily it fits into this abandoned, off-tan room.

In the exiguous glow of Remus' wand, Severus remembers the reason they're here at all. In all this cerebration, he somehow has let the fact sift itself from the limp fingers of his memory, but he's spotted the purpose again, picking it up from where he let it drop at his own feet. Lighting his own wand as well, he kneels down to the first cupboard he sees and opens it to find anything at all that can help him in the least.

The cupboard is stuffed with old cookbooks. Dumb things, all Muggle material from what he can discern, papers sticking out from here and there and cobwebs dripping off the ledges inside. With a scowl, he closes the door with a loud thud and lifts himself back up to his feet.

He stops there, his eyes bound to what sits in front of him, so tightly that it's almost as if it wasn't even his choice to see them at all.

Above the cupboard sit more shelves, stacked almost as high as the ceiling, all holding frames. Frames with pictures inside them. Pictures of people.

But, while other nearby homes may hold pictures of the families and friends of whoever lives inside, this shelf holds pictures of students. Yes, all the favorites of Horace Slughorn have been methodically placed on this shelf, all the best scholars of his immaterial classes, all the valedictorians and creatives. This is the shelf where it's all held. The shelf of favoritism, classism, bias. It's all here.

Remus, now, has seen it as well, standing just next to Severus with an unmarked expression as his eyes fix themselves on the images. His gaze lacks its usual spry flare, the typical luster of detachment completely absent from its home. It doesn't take long before Severus looks the same. Although, with him, this look isn't particularly out-of-place.

His eyes have rested on the frame of a young Lily Evans. And, although his mind is screaming at itself to make him turn away, make him leave, make him go do something else, he can't. He's wedged there, looking into the laughing eyes of the one friend he ever really had, and, therefore, the one friend he ever really lost.

Remus speaks, and it takes Snape only a quick glance to process that Lupin, in contrast, is contemplating the portrait of Regulus Black, remembering, through relation, only Sirius. Severus turns away. He's almost forgotten that Lupin is alone, too.

It's just a thread away from being comforting. Being despondent with someone else is definitely preferable over being despondent on one's own. A paradox of sorts, but one Severus doesn't like to admit the existence of. He doesn't want to accede that Lupin's sudden closeness to him is helping. It makes him wish to evanesce past the dreadful elements of the earth and never return to them. He would much rather ignore it. So he will.

He takes a long breath and pretends he dislikes everything about the man positioned next to him. He focuses so intensely he barely even catches the next uttered statement.

"What a life this shelf has the curse of possessing," Remus murmurs at it. Severus reaches out to touch Lily's frame, a stiffness pummeling over his chest with the inspissated smoke of denial.

"It holds alive what we cannot," he replies, his voice airier than it usually sounds as he pulls his fingers back, curling them into a loose fist by his side. "Wouldn't that make it a blessing?"

Remus laughs humorlessly, shrugs, and points the tip of his wand at Regulus' face, leering into it with one of the most complicated expressions Severus may have ever seen. "It depends on what aspect of life it is that it's keeping alive." 

He turns from the image, his eyes perching on a frame just behind the one Snape is fixated on. "Oh, look," he says, his tone once again light and convivial as he points to a small boy in need of a haircut. "It's you."

But he doesn't see it. This time, Severus finally has the strength to turn himself away. Because although he can stand to see the person he's grieving, he can never bring himself to look on the face of his own contorting, hideous, teratoid soul.

"So it is," he replies darkly, the fluctuations he utters sounding too forced, not quite genuine enough to escape a reaction of worry, and he heads out of the room.

His footsteps are light enough to match his own heartbeat as he opens the door to Slughorn's personal study, the image of Lily burned into the back of his eyes as he looks numbly around the room.

This one is particularly empty. It looks as though everything Horace ran off with, he took from this room alone. And this tells Severus that he's in the right spot. This whispers the canard that all the cardinal things are kept in this room. All his secrets, all his flaws, and all his hidden books.

The closet in the room is completely barren other than a few mouse-ridden shelves. Even the desk holds nothing other than a few inkless pens and a key to a drawer that houses only a spider and a pack of sticky notes. Snape regards it with a foul scoff, disenchanted at the denouement of the room. Horace put in too much effort, taking every single little belonging of his from this forsaken space. How he even did it when one can't own much when on the run is a strange thought in and of itself.

Lupin appears in the doorway, however, before the night can be declared a loss. In his arm is tucked a large three-ring binder. On his face is held a proud smirk.

"Found something," he announces, holding out the binder to Severus, who opens the front cover and looks through the contents.

It's not his book. It's not what he's been searching for, no, but it may be just as profitable; just as pivotal to his current circumstances.

What he holds in his arms is Horace Slughorn's entire curriculum, with notes and plans ranging from the beginning of his teaching years to the very recent end. Snape now holds everything he's been missing in his classroom, every drop of information he hasn't known. He holds instruction and guidance and knowledge of which he hasn't yet been informed. And this, though it isn't his potions book, is perhaps one of the better outcomes that could have come of this night, resulting in the both of them — Severus, engrossed in the messy, masculine handwriting, and Remus, engrossed in the look of his interest — being very aware of it.

Snape gives a subdued, Lilliputian chuckle, one of almost pure disbelief, his eyes lightening as he stares at the pages beneath him. "How— Where did you even manage to find this?" 

Remus leans against the doorframe, crossing his arms in satisfaction and motioning out into the hall with a tip of his head. "He left it in his kitchen," he replies. "Strange, too. It was right out on his table. Like he read through it right before he left, or... forgot it, or something. Perhaps both."

The reply is spewed out before it's able to be filtered. Snape speaks, for one of the unwonted occasions in his life, without thinking at all.

"Remus Lupin, you are a saint."

It hits the air with a slap of dense silence. Remus does a double-take, craning his neck forward and staring back in consternation at the such rare approval. "I— what?"

But Severus has already brushed past him, abating the light on his wand before tucking it back into his robes and making his way to the front door. Remus has no choice but to follow, unanswered, ignored, but, in his eyes, ignored and unanswered in only the best way possible. And he likes it. He likes almost being enough to Severus Snape. It shows he's doing well, and this is a humbling thought.

They pick up speed as they wind themselves back out of the home. Though their adventure is coming to a close, the thrill and reality of what they're doing finally kicks in. The adrenaline finally arrives, and they're left bolting through the house as if their lives depend on their speed alone.

They rush outside and close the door behind them, small mischievous laughs of triumph emanating surprisingly from them both, Remus leaning back against the outer wall of the house and Severus smirking down at the open binder in his arm. He steps off the front porch, swishing down the walkway and through the gate into the street, paging through what Lupin has found for him, feeling, for a brief moment of awe, genuine indebtedness for the very quiddity of such a person. He hears Lupin walk up behind him, and he oddly isn't irritated or bombarded by his company. Because perhaps Remus is a kind man. Perhaps he isn't worth the rancor Snape has been sure to have him receive.

His thoughts are diverted as a gentle snowflake lands on the open page of Slughorn's book. Looking up into the deep navy sky, now turned gray with the thick clouds of light winter storms, he feels the swift breeze flow through the loose tendrils of his hair, and he closes his eyes as if even willing to die against its sweet touch.

"It's snowing," he says, like it isn't self-evident. He doesn't know what's gotten into him. He doesn't like stating the obvious unless he's the only person that finds it such. And yet here he is, involved with such unnecessary things as inherent audible observation.

"So it is," Remus replies, crossing his hands behind his back and looking up at it, glancing briefly at Snape's fingers while he closes the cover of the leather binder. He avoids looking at the moon, even though it isn't full. He finds it minacious, shying away from the sight of the clouds in case it just might happen to peek out from between them.

"I, hah—" Remus laughs, looking down at Severus as he stands so tranquilly in the faint light of the nighttime snow, pausing for a moment as he watches, "—I hate to ruin the little mood you have going, but I'm freezing my balls off."

Severus turns to him with a blank expression, opening his eyes again to see his shivering form. "Charming."

His remark is met with a mischievous grin as Remus stares him down in the tenderly-landing snow, the moonlight brushing itself on the high point of his cheeks like watercolor on a thick woven canvas; a smirk he can't bring himself to dislike. He sighs, closing his eyes for a brief expression of exhaustion, offering out his arm in resignation.

"I'll lead us back, then," Snape replies flatly, giving him a low-browed look of false disapproval. "Take my hand."

His fingers unfurl, open, inviting, and Remus gives them a somewhat amused glance.

"Hand?" he clarifies, narrowing his eyes with a fun smirk, and Snape's fingers close again.

"Or..." he replies quickly, clearing his throat and looking out at the lightly-dusted street so as to show a façade of detachment, "...whatever works."

"Oh, ah, no, yes, that's fine," Lupin replies in a rush, and his palm slides over Snape's with a soft, comforting, unjustly warm grip. "I just didn't think you were one to... hold people's hands. I suppose— Well, I was under the impression that touching others in any sense was something you wouldn't want to do."

"You are making this far more difficult than it must be, Remus," Severus snaps back, his discomfort only growing further as the man focuses more diametrically on the unlikely reality of it all. "You're overthinking it, although this isn't far out-of-character for you. Do try to be less predictable so we can move on."

"If anything, I'm underthinking it—" Remus begins, but before he has the chance to finish, Severus has given him a dull stare and thrown them both through the thin walls of reality, stretching their bodies and souls through space and time and space again until they've broken through the sheet of timelessness and landed on their heels in the outskirts of Hogsmeade. Snape immediately reclaims the independence of his own hand, tearing it quickly away to brush a few snowflakes off the deep fabric of his cloak. Holding Slughorn's binder tightly to his chest, he begins to trek through the thin layer of snow on the frostbitten grass, letting the shop lights behind them guide the way to the nearest entrance of Hogwarts.

Remus, unenviably jogging for just a bit to catch up, gives a glance over his shoulder at the small town. He watches the yellow light it emanates, remembering his frequent visits to its streets as a student. He savors those memories, the ones he still has, back when he didn't have a care in the world and he wasn't alone. Back when he had Potter and Evans and Pettigrew and Black, all laughing as they sat around the table in The Three Broomsticks, or when they'd sneak into The Shrieking Shack every full moon, all together, all so close, just them without a care in the world or the reality of adulthood and lost souls. No murder, no crime, no bad blood splattered across their hands.

It's a painful memory, but one he's glad he has. There's still this sense of childhood magic about it, this untethered happiness that eases into his chest as he thinks back to all the good times spent in those shops, all the jokes made and the pranks pulled. He gives a small, bittersweet smile at the buildings as they tread farther and farther from their light.

He looks now at Severus, whose back is completely turned away from the village, the yellow light hitting only the shoulders of his cloak and touching not a single area of his face. He scowls roughly at the darkness he's packaged in, and Remus softens at the sight. He likely has memories of it, too, he reckons; worse ones than his own, but memories nonetheless.

Remus chuckles, thinking back to school field trips and casual visits after class. "Do you remember—"

"I prefer not to," Severus interjects, ending the sentence shortly enough where the following silence is heavier than the memories themselves. Lupin nods and clears his throat, turning in the direction of the school and forgetting the subject entirely.

Severus catches the fleeting sense of dejection from him, glancing quickly at his tight expression and deciding on doing absolutely nothing about it. He doesn't want to look like he cares. The thought alone makes him shrink further into his own cloak, his knuckles whitening as he grips tighter the three-ring binder in his arms. He will not feel windswept in such a way; resistless in the chilling, humiliating sense of letting someone know how he feels if it's anything other than the only responses he as a child was ever shown: disappointment, disapproval, and senseless irritation. 

Remus changes the subject, his posture tight against the cold, stagnant air. He crosses his arms against the freezing sensation as they walk, gritting his teeth at the temperature. His shoulders give a slight shiver.

"On another note, you haven't found that book yet, have you, now?" he asks. "Heard you were having some grievances with it. Some sort of broken spell or something."

They reach the long entrance to the school, feeling immediately warmer once they're in the passageway and out of the wind. The pale moonlight is placid as it ever has been, washing the color out of each and every dark plank of wood they walk across.

"How much, exactly, does Albus tell the planet about my personal life?" Severus replies in subtle confirmation, stiffening at the intrusion of the possibilities.

"Actually," Remus counters casually, "it was Filius this time."

"Flitwick, the little shit," Severus susurrates under his breath before facing Lupin with an entirely separate thought. 

"How do you spend so much time with these people?" he questions, realizing suddenly that he seems to know every little current detail about everything despite not even working at the school. "How is that even... humanly possible?" 

"Oh, it isn't," Remus says, unfolding his arms and tucking his hands into the pockets of his trousers, "but it is... werewolfly—" He stops himself with a chuckle, limping a bit as they finally reach the door to the building and walk inside. "Okay, no. Not saying that joke. That's bad."

Severus shuts the door behind him as he follows him in, sniffling in the sudden warmth they're greeted by. "I suppose I owe you now for sparing my already-scarred soul," he deadpans. "Perhaps an explanation would compensate?"

"Sounds about fair," Remus jests, following Snape as he rushes smoothly through the halls to the dungeons, making an effort to not step on his magnificently-flowing cloak (although he does find the idea quite funny and moreover difficult to give up).

"To put it simply," Severus explains, his heels clicking against a set of stairs as he skirts casually down them, "I have a spell that I wrote to undo item misplacement, but when I use it to find the book, it always brings me something else. Most items I've received aren't even my own. That book will be the beginning of my decline; I swear it."

"Ah," Remus says, following Severus while he tears silently through the halls, finally reaching the final staircase to the underground floor. "That's..."

Taking a moment to think, his eyes narrow as he gives the stairs a contemplative look of suspicion. "That's strange."

"Oh, is it?" Severus scoffs sarcastically, slinking down the Slytherin hall and grabbing the key to his room from his pocket. Opening his door, he holds it open for Lupin, following him inside and closing it gently shut behind them.

He drops the binder down on his desk, practically collapsing into his chair as Remus takes a seat across from him, crossing one leg over the other and leaning his temple exhaustedly on his first two fingers. He watches Snape silently as he lights a candle and looks through the pages of Slughorn's curriculum, cross-referencing rubrics for minutes on end without pause, his dark eyes catching the light from the soft flame and seeming for once to appear excited, hopeful, to have a purpose. He's rarely seen him this way, the shadows on the farther sides of his face no longer looking so sharp, the light on the near side of his nose not looking so sneered.

Severus stops, looking briefly up at Remus as his fingers rest on a note a fourth of the way through the binder. His tone is smoked and honeyed, pretty and waveless as it crosses the space between them. His gaze is soft, genuinely concerned, legitimately caring. If he knew now, he would make an effort to harden it.

"Do you have anywhere to be?" he questions, though it isn't a demand, and there's no deeper meaning behind it. Remus shakes his head, his gaze following Snape's thin fingers as they grab a quill pen and dip it in a glass jar of deep green ink.

"Ah— no, actually," he replies, pursing his lips and watching the pen connect to a blank sheet of parchment beneath Severus' wrist. "I like being here, in this school. I like... reliving."

Severus gives him a darkly elusive look, jotting down a page number on the parchment beneath him and turning to the next chapter. "What privilege you hold."

Lupin watches him work as if it's the most intriguing subject in the world, mesmerized by the smoothness of his motion, the grace of his slanted cursive handwriting. Growing tired under the dark orange candlelight, he leans his head against the shelf next to him, causing Severus to point to him his attention again.

"Bed's over there," he offers emotionlessly, and, upon seeing Lupin's hesitant expression, adds a scoff. "Do you expect me to climb in next to you? I'm not tired and I'm not so indecent. I have work to do; work with which sleep cannot coexist. Go to bed, Lupin."

But Remus does not do this, perhaps out of indignation, perhaps out of entertainment. He stays, watching silently the seepage of words dripping from Snape's pen, listening to the soft scratches it makes against the parchment. It's hard to tell when, precisely, it is that he finally falls asleep, but it doesn't go unnoticed for long.

Snape's cloaked figure stands up once he notices that Lupin has fallen adroitly soporose. He grabs a pillow from his bed, lifting Remus' head so that he can place it meticulously between him and the shelf he's resting against. He readjusts it a few times, gentle, as soft as possible so as not to disturb his sleep, moving the pillow in a way that won't hurt later. Leaving his side to go back to his work, Severus' fingers trail slowly off the fabric, his steps oscillating as he looks down upon his sleeping peer and coaxes his own body to bring itself away.

It takes a while for this to happen.

But it eventually does, and so he works. He works until his wrist cramps and his eyes can no longer focus on what's ahead of them. He works until the stars fade out and the sky turns from black to blue to a deep green not unlike the ink in his quill, stopping only to give Remus an occasional glance for confirmation that his pillow is doing its job. He works until, eventually, Remus wakes up again, the gentle sunlight from the early morning horizon casting thin lines on his already-scarred face from the back window, noticing the pillow on his shoulder and setting it next to him with a small smile.

"Good morning, Remus," Snape greets him, his stack of notes now almost as thick as the binder itself, his inkwell appearing significantly lower than it had been when Remus last saw it.

"Morning," Lupin replies, rubbing his eyes and sitting forward with a sigh of pain from his joints. It doesn't help that Severus seems already so unworried. Perhaps it's his sleep deprivation — no, it's definitely his sleep deprivation — but he finds it unnerving; too out-of-the-ordinary to deal with justly immediately upon waking up. "Been up all night?"

"Indeed, Lupin, I have," Snape replies coolly, closing the binder and standing to his feet. "Care for some coffee? I've heard teachers get it at sunrise in the Great Hall, but I've never before been awake and willing to socialize simultaneously at the time it's served, so I wouldn't know how good it is. Knowing Albus' preferences, however, it probably tastes a bit too much like salt."

Remus squints against the morning sun rays. "Are you typically so energized when you get no sleep?"

"Why do you ask?" Severus says in reply, swirling over to his door and throwing it open like a manic Hamlet. Remus groggily brings himself to his feet, straightening out his vest and redoing the buttons on the cuffs of his dress shirt.

"Because, if this is the case," he replies, reaching the door and stopping there as he folds his sleeves up just past his elbows, "you should stay up all night more often."

"Mm," Severus hums, leaving the doorway and stepping out into the hall. "Fear not, Remus. I'm on the tipping point of ill-fated melancholia and any moment could revert to a much worse state of my typical irritability. One unwelcome personal inquiry and I will easily—"

"Good morning, Professor!"

Severus turns to see Fallon Zygphil, the twin brother of the girl he remembers forcing into a false detention, approaching him in the hall. He diverts to him his notice, expecting some sort of update.

"What is it?"

But Zygphil doesn't ask anything of him, giving him nothing else but a look of confusion. "Just... saying hello," he replies, stopping slowly as his eyes rest on Remus Lupin standing inside his bedroom. Glancing between the two, he's overtaken by a look of dubious stupefaction, an expression both Remus and Severus register the meaning of simultaneously.

"Oh!" Remus exclaims, pointing with an awkward first finger in Snape's general direction. "Oh, we didn't... we're not—"

"Return..." Severus seethes at the Slytherin student, his tone foredooming but his gaze inconsistently placid, "to your room."

Zygphil glances between them again. "I, uh, I can't," he replies, stepping past Severus and heading for the stairs. "I have to go see my sister. She sent herself to the hospital wing last night. Not sure why. Nothing too big — she made it there herself — though I've heard her roommates woke up to a painful scream."

"Well, get on with it, then," Snape hisses quickly, "or her Ravenclaw friends won't be the only ones waking up to screaming today."

Zygphil merely snorts, turning to the stairs and leaping himself up their winding frame. "You're funny, Professor," he replies, and he's gone with a few quick skips.

Severus whips his head back to glare at Remus, who leans, arms crossed, against his doorframe.

Remus tosses out his arms. "What?"

"If you hadn't been so focused—" Severus hisses warningly, "—on buttoning your shirt the whole time, that may have not gone the gruesome way it did."

"Pfft," Remus scoffs with a gentle roll of his eyes. "Yes, it would. I was standing in your bedroom."

"Many people have stood in my bedroom, Remus," Severus replies almost scoldingly, whipping around and leading the way to the stairs. Remus, with amused intrigue, closes the door to Snape's room behind him and steps into the hall, following closely behind. "But nobody before has thought anything... indecent about it."

"Ah," Remus replies, taking a sharp breath in as his sore legs carry him up the winding staircase and out of the dungeons. "Maybe I'm just an unfamiliar face, and they can't think of a reason for a man unknown to them to be in your quarters in the early morning."

"Oh, trust me, they know who you are," Severus remarks flatly as they ascend another wide staircase into one of the main corridors. "Don't forget we attended the same school just three years ago. They won't forget a dog in just the same way they won't forget the word Snivellus. It's pointless trying to argue."

"Oh, but I'm not arguing," Remus snickers back. "I'm just saying—"

Severus sighs.

"—that if their suspicion doesn't stem from my unfamiliarity or the fact that I was in your room..." He takes a breath as his legs painfully hit the top stair. "...perhaps the change they see that makes them so wary is a change in you."

This shuts them both up for a bit, Remus gritting his teeth against the pain of his bones as Severus becomes engrossed in the potentiality of the statement. Considering the possibility heavily, he shields his expression from Lupin's vision as he leads the way down the corridor and forces out one of the least reserved responses he feels he's ever given.

"Preposterous," he chokes out, but the word is strained and uneven. It's unsound, the tone indeterminate. Because, just under the fragile surface of his own skin, he knows he's lying. He knows it's true that he's been growing soft towards the man following behind him. He wishes he wouldn't, but he's noticed that he doesn't have control over these things. Learning to enjoy a person isn't a conscious choice; it just forces its way between the bars of the cell you locked yourself into whenever it feels it's necessary. Attempting to stop it, he now understands, is like steeping tea in cold water. It'll never work all the way, it'll never work enough and it'll never work well, and so one must accept it and let it sit in all its being. One must allow it to exist without disturbance, like a wild animal; like a river. 

But this does not mean you have to enjoy it. It doesn't mean that its beauty is something you will lose yourself in. You can still remain numb to it, still spiteful against its force. Severus decides this is how he wants to treat it. Acceptingly, yet not embracingly. He'll let it happen, but he won't like it, and he won't allude to the idea that he does. Then nobody can see in. Then he's protected by a shell, and then he isn't fragile, and then he can't be wounded.

It is up for debate whether a façade strengthens you against pain or makes you more sensitive to it, however. Because, on one plate of the scale, a jab at an inauthentic aspect of oneself won't hurt as much, but it lacks on the other side of the scale the resulting scar tissue from a stab into the pained flesh of genuineness. The more one is hurt personally, the more desensitized they become to it, so the effectiveness of hiding one's true person is highly questionable when the purpose is to avoid pain.

Snape would argue, in contrast, that this isn't true. Because he's been hurt personally. He's been ridiculed for the truth of who he is; the skin he lives in. And, no matter how many times it happens, it still hurts just as deeply. The anguish is still equivalent. So perhaps a false identity is his escapism technique. Perhaps this is why he's been involved with leading double lives, experiencing himself in the world of trickery and sly, misleading truths.

He isn't sure exactly how or why — perhaps he just needs something to blame it all on — but a relentless idea in the back of his head keeps telling him that this all somehow ties back to his father. With the thought, he doesn't think he disagrees.

The Great Hall is bright and splendiferous as they step into it, the early rising sun casting subtle yellow rays over the tables and the sturdy floor, outlining each chiffony shape of the windows with such diaphanous accuracy. It's warm and smells like coffee, the deliciously dark scent wafting over them and distracting their minds from all enclosing thoughts, even if only for a few moments.

A few staff members sit at the end of one of the long student tables, positioned closely around a kettle of coffee and a plethora of old mugs. They turn to see the two enter the room, disheveled and sleep-deprived as they are, and Albus immediately makes some room for their presence, moving some documents out of the way so they can have a seat.

"A good morning to you both," he greets casually, handing them each an empty mug. Remus grabs it and sits down while Severus pours some deep black coffee into both of their cups, muttering a groggy, near inaudible reply. "Sleep well?"

"I did, yeah," Lupin replies, nodding in thanks to Snape as he fills his mug. "This one didn't sleep at all."

Severus sits across the table from him as he informs the present staff of his lack of sleep, saying nothing as he opens Slughorn's binder and continues to read through it. He listens to them speak, taking his coffee scalding and black — the necessary recipe for an all-nighter, naturally — and looking over each individual note.

"Remus, I wasn't aware that you were here today," Flitwick remarks affably from his seat. Lupin pours some cream and sugar into his mug, giving a pococurante shrug.

"It was an accident. We found Horace's curriculum last night and I nodded off while he was looking through it so intensely," he replies, searching through the available spoons on the surface of the table. "Any of these not made of silver, by any chance?"

"Oh, we should have some wooden ones around here somewhere," McGonagall says, standing up and searching through a nearby cabinet. "Are you allergic?"

"Only gets bad around the full moon," Remus explains, following her and looking through the shelf next to the one she's appraising. "I typically just use gold. Uncommon material for dishware, unfortunately. I often need to have them made custom from Hogsmeade because of it. Oh, here's one."

He grabs a small wooden spoon, bringing it back to the table and stirring the dissolving sugar into his coffee. Severus underlines a section below him, the verity of custom golden dishware sparking something in the back of his head that he can't quite place. Shaking it away and deeming it likely inconsequential, he reads through a few extra lines, his coffee burning his tongue and making it taste like metal. He doesn't mind it. Not now, at least; it's keeping him awake, which, at this point, is all that really matters.

Scribbling a note into the side of a page, his focus drifts back to the calm morning chatter of the table. He enjoys the peace in this room when only tenanted by staff members and an out-of-place peer. The adornment is so warm, so rejuvenating. He decides he should get up early more often.

"Well, Remus, I'm glad you slept well," Minerva says quietly, her voice hushed in a gossipy sort of way as she leans in over the surface of the table. "There are reports that two students came to medical overnight with missing fingernails."

"Well, isn't that strange, now?" remarks the typically-silent Argus Filch from his seat behind a fresh newspaper. "Missing fingernails."

Making the connection that one of the concatenated students naturally must be the other Zygphil, Severus takes another long sip of coffee, setting it down next to him and flipping a page with his middle finger. "Strange indeed."

"Fingernails," Remus snorts amusedly, almost spewing his coffee slightly as he plays his lifelong role of making misfortune into a joke. "You didn't get those with your spell that doesn't work, did you, Severus?"

"Oh, shut up, Remus," Snape retorts. "Telling you anything is a mistake." 

He tries to glare at him, but his usual scowl is unwillingly replaced by a smirk that he then makes an effort to hide behind his cup of coffee. Lupin smiles playfully back, tipping his head as he rests his mug just below his lips with his elbow planted on the table.

"And yet," he replies airily, as if giving some sort of philosophical lecture, "you continue to tell me so much."

"Only because you ask so assertively. Your interest is vigorous," Severus defends into his coffee.

"But do you mind my asking?" Remus challenges, leaning both his elbows on the table and examining every aspect of Snape's caliginous, effulgent eyes.

Severus raises a brow, crossing one leg over the other beneath the table. "Do you mind my telling?"

Lupin purses his lips in subtle defeat, his glance communicating a fleeting "Touché," whilst he focuses in on the others at the table again. 

"Severus, are you feeling quite alright?" Minerva asks hesitantly as she stares the two down. "You just... you appear so..."

"Lifeless?" Severus guesses. "Yes, although that isn't unusual, is it?"

"No," Lupin adds assuringly, smirking as McGonagall gives him a stern look from across the finished wood table.

"...friendly," she finishes, her face showing a mask of genuine concern as she turns back to Snape again. "Have you potentially fallen ill? Do you have a temperature?"

Severus stares her blankly down, even his heart still as he takes the question in.

"And you're... committed to this question?" he asks. "This is a genuine concern worthy of inquiry in your feeble old eyes?"

Albus lifts his hand for the purpose of easing tension, giving a light nod before taking a breath and giving the apt response Snape hasn't been able to.

"I can maintain most sincerely, Minerva, that Severus is absolutely fine," he murmurs, "and Remus is just as well. Keep in mind that I know them both much better than you do." He gives Snape a twinkling smile, some sort of message hidden behind it that Severus can't bring himself to fully comprehend. He returns his focus to the binder beneath him as the quiet chatter regarding fingernails starts up again.

It's taken him this long to realize that the coffee in his grip tastes hideous and burnt with nothing in it. Not feeling nearly awake enough to water it down, however, he leaves it black, bridling a wince every time it twists down his throat.

Movement catching his attention, he glances up to see Remus massaging his own shoulder with a pained expression, only pretending to listen to the staff's pointless conversation. Severus looks back down and puts on an act of reading.

"What day is it that you shift, Remus?" he asks, underlining something he's already circled to make it seem as though he isn't very invested in the reply.

"The eleventh," Lupin replies, blowing lightly over the surface of his already-lukewarm beverage.

"And..." Snape adds in receipt, pretending once more to cross-reference a page, "do you require supervision?"

"Well, it does depend," Remus says between small sips, his gaze soft on the downward curve of Severus' nose. "Do you require someone to supervise?"

For once Severus looks up, straight into the eyes of the man he's talking to, not even minding the social closeness of the gesture. He doesn't look back down. The eyes before him are too soft, too bright to tear himself from.

"As a matter of fact, no," he answers, his tongue uncomfortably numbed by the steaming hot water he's surrounded it with. "However, your company recently has not been insufferable. Joining you wouldn't be a burden if, of course, such a case is necessary on your part."

"Ah. It isn't," Remus counters. "However, all sorts of company are... you know. It's a pack animal thing, I think, because it only happened after I became — you know — the way I am, but everything feels more secure when I'm surrounded by people I trust."

The sentence settles on the oak table between them. Severus glances over every aspect of Lupin's expression, seeing quickly that he isn't even partially joking. He bites the inside of his cheek, finally diverting his eyes back to the words below him.

"So you trust me," he assumes aloud, and they're both quiet for a bit as the staff members next to them keep rattling on and on about fingernails and mysterious happenings and something about next year's Quidditch team.

Remus nods, his typical jesting stance still unusually absent as he, too, looks down. "Yeah," he confirms. "I think so."

The air settling slowly between them, Severus closes Slughorn's binder and downs his last drop of coffee, setting his mugs with all the used ones on the tabletop as Remus does the same. He thinks about this new fact, this new reality that Remus Lupin trusts him. He wonders if he trusts him back. It's hard to decide with a person that's as good as an acquaintance now as they are as a nemesis in one's vacant memory. It's difficult to choose, even though it's a simple question of yes or no. Never before has it been more excruciating for him to make such a simple decision, such an easy move. It confuses him. Berates his level of objectivity with the simple block of thought it can create. For once, how he feels about the werewolf in front of him is something he actually doesn't know.

But, as Remus gives a small wave to the staff before following him out of the Great Hall, Snape finds opulence in his small, fun smile, the way it dips in the middle and points tightly upward on the corners, the way the stubble of a night spent in the wrong bedroom shapes itself around it. He finds peace in Lupin's demeanor, his laid-back approach to everything thrown against his sanity, his jokes that only remove themselves when he understands it's best to be gentle. Because Remus Lupin is the same as he's always been. He's predictable, stable, easygoing. He wouldn't hurt a fly just as surely as he wouldn't hurt the person swatting it. And this does, indeed, make him trustworthy. Trustworthy because he's safe. Because the apple he once threw hit James Potter on the back. Because he wouldn't accept Wolfsbane without a moral transaction.

Severus knows he's cynical. He considers himself one of the worst people to attempt to get trust out of. But something about Remus Lupin, perhaps the shaggy, golden-brown hair strewn messily over his eyes, or perhaps the eyes themselves, the earnestness they possess, somehow slink their way over his barriers. Something about how he stands, how he laughs, how he smirks when he makes a joke, how he always dresses in earth tones, how the long scar over his nose and the parallel one on his jawline spell out so transparently his pain, make him easy to understand. Safe to speak to. Like he has nothing to hide; nothing to hide from.

He's honest. He's honest without even trying. And Severus hates that. He's pleased by it, but he hates it.

He hates how quickly he's grown to enjoy his presence. How he's become excited to see him whenever he knows he will. How he's been anticipating those cursed Order meetings, even, with half the members accusing him of treason and voting to kick him out. He's been attending them anyway, and he's been attending them because of Remus, and that's what he doesn't like. It makes him uncomfortable in the same way his father did. There's a presence deeply rooted there, something he's suppressing with too much force to pinpoint. Some sort of link between the two, and he doesn't want to think about it, because he doesn't want to know about it, because he's scared of what he'll find.

He's scared because he feels he may already know what it is.

It's the pleasant pins and needles in his abdomen, the light feeling, the playful, easygoing banter. It's the way he watched him fall asleep the night before, feeling the need to put a pillow under his head; caring. It makes him uncomfortable, caring for the man, even though caring for others doesn't. He dislikes that it's different with Lupin. He dislikes that he doesn't know to the same degree as he revels in being blind to it.

Avoidance, of course, is the reason this is a problem at all. And he knows this. But, instead of fixing it, he avoids it yet again. Distracts himself. Escapes from it all.

"I can walk you out, if necessary or needed otherwise," he offers flatly to Remus, who follows him out of the Great Hall with a flinch as one of his legs buckles in anguish. "Do you require a pain relief medication, Lupin?"

"No, thank you. No. No, no, no," Remus assures him quickly, taking a long breath in through his teeth and squeezing his eyes shut while he composes himself. "No, that won't be necessary. And you've got class. I can escort myself."

"Mm, yes, I see you're quite capable of basic human movement," Severus deadpans. Remus' mouth twitches upward — a slight communication that he appreciates the wit — and he straightens back up to his feet.

"Really, I can walk on my own," he breathes. "I just stepped wrong is all. And I need to hurry back to get that bloody potion down— Did you add vanilla to it, by the way?"

"Why, was there too much for your specific likings?" Snape asks, and Lupin shakes his head.

"No, it's a lot easier to stomach now, actually," he says. "Barely even had to wash the flavor down with that god-awful chocolate."

Severus pauses. "I thought you liked chocolate."

"Most people assume such," Remus replies, walking next to him as they head down the nearest stairs in the direction of the ground floor. "Just because it helps doesn't mean it's good."

Severus smirks only slightly, thinking back to all the times in the past he's seen Remus eating it or carrying it around; how he has cabinets full of it in his cottage so he can't run out.

"So you don't, then," he assumes, stepping off the stairwell and leading the way down another. "Like chocolate, I mean."

Remus chuckles. "Merlin, no," he exclaims breathily as students start appearing in the corridors ahead. "I hate it to such an incredible degree that it's not even worth explaining."

They reach the ground floor, arriving at the nearest exit as more and more students file out of the hallways. Remus motions to them as he rigs himself out to leave, double-checking that he still has his wand tucked safely inside his vest.

They both stand there as if unaware of what exactly to do, Severus focusing caustically on the ancient refurbished floor and ignoring the ever-growing amount of students around them.

"You should go, shouldn't you?" Remus says finally. "Could prepare for your classes while you still have time."

He knows he's made this point already, but he's frankly out of things to say. Severus looks up, giving a formal nod and straightening his long robes over his shoulders.

"That's correct, Remus," he utters back, not exactly sure where to rest his gaze but settling on a distant wall, "I could."

Lupin nods, stepping one foot out of the entrance as the cold snowy air whips at his loosely-fallen hair. "See you in the very near future, then?"

"Inevitably," Snape drones back, and Remus tilts outward, beginning to direct the door to its shut position as he exits fully into the freezing winter air.

"Bye, then," he says. Snape, not knowing what else to do, replies as eloquently as he can. But, as per usual, the presence of Remus Lupin once again puts him at a loss for all his big words.

"Goodbye, Lupin."

The door closes, one last waft of the blizzard air throwing itself inside as Severus is left standing alone in the hall. Taking a breath and straightening his posture, he regains the ataraxia he realizes he's lost, turning to promenade back down to the dungeons once more. With each step, he consciously acknowledges that he's taking himself farther away from Remus, who ambles with just as much drive in the opposite direction, disappearing finally into the fresh, thick snow.

Consequently, just as the blizzard surrounds the werewolf in a kind of cold he only feels is deserved, the dark, damp stone equally surrounds the alchemist. With so much on their changing consciences, neither of them even notice at all.


	12. 𝚇     >>     𝙿𝙷𝚈𝚂𝙸𝙲𝙰 𝙴𝚃 𝙼𝙴𝙽𝚃𝙸𝚂 𝙼𝙾𝚁𝙿𝙷

< 1 MONTH, 1 WEEK, 3 DAYS >

Remus,

You likely have noticed the absence of your jacket. It is in my office, draped over the foot of the bed where you left it. I'll return it to you tonight by the willow; from what you've told me, the physical state of someone on the day of their shift is worse than any surrounding dates, thence making it only logical to not require your walking further than necessary.

I would also like to hear your opinion on this month's Wolfsbane in relation to batches you've been gifted in the past. You needn't reply in writing; this is something perhaps discussed best tête-à-tête. I embrace critique — slander, even; I'm used to it — especially since this is a recipe I will be distributing directly to you for a large amount of the foreseeable future and it must be perfected as soon as manageable.

It's supposed to be cold tonight. I'd advise to bring a coat, but, as aforementioned, that's my job.

S. S.

—

"I understand that I didn't make it clear why I called you in," Albus says as Severus ensconces himself in the chair before his desk, pulling his robes taut beneath him.

"Would such be typical?" the Potions professor interposes in response, though his mordant reply is veneered with the sweet undertone of hesitance. He sees the strain in Dumbledore's features, the apologetic stiffness of his joints. He takes it all in, unease domineering the very rhythm of his lungs.

"I know you have a class in session," Albus says, his voice too light; too forced. "Filius promised to check in on your students for the time being while we discuss some... more important matters."

His centenarian fingers cross between one another as he leans forward on his desk. Snape doesn't say a word. He feels puissant when making the other person speak first. It helps him hide from his own nerves.

"Severus," Dumbledore begins, his artless blue eyes boring into Snape's dark, shielded stare, "I am about to ask of you something very difficult; something that may last your entire life long."

Although the witty remark, "Don't tell me you wish for me to listen to Minerva gushing over Elvis," does initially traverse his wit, Severus holds back from it. The urgency seems too significant to dismiss with a statement of causticity. He doesn't break his silence just as it keeps itself from breaking him in return.

"In the event that Tom returns," Albus explains, his tone slow and waxy as it runs over the ridges of his desk, "I hope you understand that I expect to rely on your loyalty in every possible area."

Severus finally speaks: "Voldemort is not a dangerous term."

"I'm not afraid of it," Dumbledore chuckles. "I like to think of him by the name he had when he once had light left to cling to." His smile fades softly, his eyes dampening as they set themselves back on Snape. "I hope for the sake of your inner peace that you never choose the path he landed on."

Severus taps his left foot inflexibly on the floor. "Because of my lack of inner peace, Albus, I'd never give even an impermanent speculation to such a fatal option. Don't let the worry cross your so fragile conscience."

The headmaster nods, adjusting his glasses where they sit on his loud, indelicate nose, contrastingly delivering his request in such an equally soft and respectful way it's almost too difficult to fully take in. He's not aggressive, not malicious. Nothing is wrong with his demeanor apart from the words they're giving out; a manner that Severus isn't very used to at all.

"And I wish for you to protect this dedication while you have it," he says, the words a subtle rescript, a strong plead. "Out of everyone in the Order, everyone in the Ministry, everyone even in this school, you are the one with the most information, Severus. You are the one I must know I can count on through everything. You must understand this."

"I understand it fully," Snape replies carefully, his fingers swathing themselves sturdily around the ends of his armrests, "but the Dark Lord is dead."

"You are being hopeful, Severus," Albus accuses, and Snape feels the weak need to stand and wring his neck for such a suggestion that his thinking is so nearsighted. "You never saw him die. You never saw a thing."

"Oh, I saw quite a bit, Albus," Severus bites back like an arrow from a bow, raising his voice as he references his uncovering of Lily's remains. "I may be hopeful, but I was under the impression that hope was something you wanted us all to have."

His lips curl into an acetuous snarl at Dumbledore, who is sitting paused in his seat, even his breath appearing to still. They give one another rigid stares as the room begins to deescalate itself. Albus takes the first breath he's had in a moment too long.

"I... apologize for the comment," he offers earnestly. "I know you're under a lot of stress with—"

"You wish to exploit my unfortunate circumstances to obtain information on Voldemort's army."

There's no heat behind the sentence. There's nothing at all. It's less of an accusation than a mere representation of visible fact. A statement of complete truth.

Albus isn't sure what to say. He appears to be in checkmate in his seat, knowing anything he says can put him under fire in the drop of a hat. For once, it's him that becomes the man to take a troth of reticence, though it's barely intentional and barely of any strength.

Snape speaks again, crossing one leg over the other and looking his employer, his colleague, his friend, dead in the core of his spineless old eyes. He watches them glisten over with hesitance. He finds appeasement in knowing the nature of his sentiments; reading him like an open book even though he makes an effort to remain so publicly closed.

"I assume," Severus drawls, his expression masked and unmoving as he continues on, "that you must understand how much danger I would be throwing myself into; how much work I'd have to put into strengthening my skills of Occlumency, how I would have to be completely on guard at every waking moment, how if I slip up even once and the Dark Lord sees the goodness in my memory that I will be slaughtered only minutes preceding the rest of all of you."

Dumbledore doesn't even take a second of thought before he nods funereally, giving a long exhale and a casual tap of his first finger on the wood of his desk. "It would be very rigorous work," he says, "but trust me when I tell you that I would not have asked such things of you had I found you incompetent or unworthy of the task."

His gaze meets Snape's again, his raised brows reintroducing the question of whether or not he's willing to take on such an immeasurable vow.

It's a lot to ponder, and a lot to resolve on straightaway.

"I... have a class to teach, Albus," Severus concludes, standing up and heading for the exit. Dumbledore nods and sits back in his seat, crossing his arms as he watches him go. His voice is tensile and riskless.

"Think about it."

"As if, with such a tremendous request, I even have a choice," Severus remarks, his back turned to the headmaster as he steps further away. "Trust the fact that this will hold an unwelcome position in my conscience for weeks regardless of my decision."

"I never denied it."

"You never deny anything," Snape counters like a discomposed fledgling, pulling open the door with a swift grab of the handle. "Not out loud."

Albus sighs at the passive remark, leaning forward to controvert it. "Severus—"

But the professor has already left, his chest heavy with the too-familiar feeling of being encumbered by his own subsistence. As he strides irately down the hall, his motions swift and ruthless and intimidatingly driven, his teeth bared and seething at the idea that he may have only been hired to be taken advantage of, he comes to terms with the idea that he may only be a plot device in the Order's little scheme.

He won't let himself be belittled in such ways. He can help them without question — Dumbledore, The Order — but he won't make it easy. He must keep it just difficult enough where it's recognized how important this is. How important he is. Then, if others see it, he may begin to remember it himself.

His fist slams against his own door as he ploughs into his classroom, making his students recoil in alarm as he flows over to his desk and shoves his own papers into an empty drawer. Flitwick, who stands in front of the class with a somewhat dazed expression, tips his head in perplexed observation at the mannerisms.

"Thank you, Filius; that will be all," Severus says, opening his binder from Slughorn and flipping through his notes as the class silently stares on.

Flitwick clears his throat, picking up a book from the floor and setting it softly on the corner of the desk, adjusting his robes as he motions to it with his head.

"You'll like that one," he explains. "Might help you with your little predicament."

"Predicament. Which one?" Severus chortles caustically, and Filius gives him an eye of what looks to be genuine concern.

"Do find time to read it," he counsels as he heads to the exit of the classroom. "Your students have been lovely."

He leaves, his small frame taking so much substance with it, loads of presence leaving by the side of his height. The room feels so much more empty without him in it, although this isn't incontrovertibly a bad thing; just something Severus notices. It crosses his mind that this may come as an anticlimax to his students, who now appear to be sulking a bit at the books on their tables.

Sighing, he tries his best to brush aside the reality of his palaver with Albus. The mortal existentialism of the request alone is enough to send him into a spiral of unwanted overstrung thought, so he might as well forget it for the time being. It's best for everyone here. 

Walking in front of all the children and at a loss of what to say, Severus stops and looks them all over, getting a gauge on their inclination to participate in anything. Seeing that it's apparently very low, he's overtaken by the sudden amusement of the fact that he's completely able to scare them out of it; to chock their systems against their will. Turning his backs to them, he glances over his bottles of ingredients on the shelves of his wall, deciding on a project and whipping back around to give them all a cool, dramatically unaffected stare.

"Zygphil," he begins slowly, lifting a brow at Afton and referring with a glance to the bandage wrapped snugly around her finger. "Sent to medical recently, now, were you?"

"Yes," she replies blankly. "My nail was ripped off."

"I am aware," Snape replies. "And be indebted. You're advantaged to be admitted over the absence of a mere nail."

He grabs some bottles off his shelves, holding them in one arm as he distributes one cauldron to each table with as much enthusiasm as he can muster (which truly isn't much), sweeping to the front again and meeting his students' eyes with a look of effectuated dispassion.

"One of you," he speaks, his tone flat and unbothered, "will be poisoned."

A sudden stillness hits the room with the force of an asteroidal collision, and Severus decides to add a small disclaimer to his opening sentence.

"Not by me; not in this class," he clarifies, and the ambience loosens only slightly. "However, as there are somewhere over twenty of you here, and poison under bad blood is a leading cause of ailment and fatality in the wizarding community, the odds of this entire class living their entire lives without encountering it are undeniably next to zero."

The students jump as he slams a bottle onto one of the worktables, pointing at its label.

"Pre-formulated bezoar," he speaks, setting the other decanters down with equal force, "mistletoe berries, and unicorn horns. The essential combination for the Antidote to Common Poisons. They're terribly expensive — do not. Waste them."

Placing a bottle of each ingredient onto every table, Snape whirls back to his desk and corroborates his notes, feeling imposing and systematic as he does. Sitting down and giving one last look to his students, he gives his final instruction.

"Work with your table group," he orders. "Whomever comprises the most accurate replica will receive ten extra credit points for each participant at their table, unless a teammate has done nothing to help, in which case they will be excluded. The recipe is on page two hundred and eleven. You may begin."

The room erupts in movement as the students flip to the assigned page and plan with one another in hushed whispers. Severus basks in the unexcitable silence of it all, enjoying how collected the room is and finally looking over the book left on his desk from Filius' possession: an old hardcover copy written by Tenbri Artifex entitled Intended Intellect of your Hex. The cover is leather-bound, the words indented in compressed golden letters, standing out like liquid silver in the crevices of a sheet of slate.

He lifts the cover open, turning through the old pages and skimming through the contents. Flipping to the first chapter, he coasts his attention through the introduction, his gaze alighting itself with the bright glint of interest as he becomes so quickly imbued, so stealthily enthralled by the words below him.

"Intention," reads the book in his stiff grip, "is the driving force behind every produced element a wizard can project. A spell or potion without its intention will be weak or completely useless until its purpose is defined and kept firmly in mind by its user when being put in motion. This is the fact that solidifies the existence of the Nonverbal genre of incantations; the meaning and objective create the power and control the result.

"Any misplaced or warped intention can easily have an unwanted effect our outcome, which can, in certain cases, serve as beneficial to its performer. Although exceedingly difficult to perform unless on accident, Contraverbis spells — incantations in which the caster proclaims the name of one spell but fires a completely separate one—"

Severus flips open his notes and takes a pen, jotting down "Contraverbis - Artifex, p. 5," in the upper lefthand corner.

"—are completely present, although not common, well-known, or mainstream due to the immense difficulty put into mastering the skill. Speculation on this topic has lead to a deeper understanding of how important intention really is, and furthermore why there's an effort made to begin teaching intention control at a very young age."

Snape glances up at his students, who quietly work on grinding the horns into their cauldrons as their tablemates stir them in. He can barely focus on superintending them, his mind running in frenzied circles and meditating over his own skills regarding spell intent.

Due to myths and overprotective pronouncements he remembers being immersed in during his own school days, he's been under the impression for years that such things as Contraverbis spells aren't even physically workable to cast. He remembers taming the Nonverbal spells in record time, but never did a professor give him further instruction; further room to grow. Until just now, he has thought that Nonverbal was the final step. The closing notch.

But now, unraveling that there's more, that there's an entire concept he's never even heard of, an entire recourse likely linked directly to his current predicament, Severus Snape finds himself tumbling through hypotheses and plans so quickly and with such force that he can't even process a single thought before he's thrown himself into another. His own brain outruns him, his own advancement far too lagged for its potential as his thoughts sprint past him and he's left with various jumbled fragments of ideas that aren't remotely close to being coherent. 

Closing the book, he attempts to clear his mind by means of distraction, pacing between all the classroom tables and surveying their potion headway. 

"Counterclockwise, Grozny," he hears himself grumble down at a backwards-stirring wand. "It takes little effort to heed the given directions. They aren't insufferably cryptic."

As he whips past Gorbyn Grozny's table, he's precipitously precluded as a hand shoots out and tugs at his robes. Turning to face the source, Severus lands his eyes on a somewhat flustered Fallon Zygphil, whose anxiety is plain and dominating over his features. His eyes shift back and forth throughout the room, leaning in Snape's direction as if he has no choice but to be discreet.

"I have to talk to you after class," he whispers, hushed, urgent; a tone Severus is hesitant to admit his own worry over. "It's important. I don't know who else to speak to."

Snape, forcing his own misgiving down his gullet, looks back at his student with an expression of blank quietude. "If you require academic assistance," he suggests, "I advise that you ask Winchester Biobi. Ravenclaw, year six. He's especially devoted to this class and excels at tutoring. Or, if necessary, you may also tolerate the help of Stell Punmar, Hufflepuff, also year six. They are bright and acquainted with this subject as well, and they've never failed a—"

"No," Zygphil interrupts, his voice dropping even lower as he stiffly shakes his head. Doubt returns to Severus' chest as he reads the grim expression on the face of the scholar below him. "I don't need Potions help. That's not what I need you for. It's a different kind of assistance I'm asking for. Advice for a pretty significant... problem."

Severus closes his eyes, remembering the date. It's the eleventh. It's the full moon.

"I'm out of the building tonight," he announces, passively pulling his robes out of Zygphil's grip. "How urgent is it?"

"Urgent enough," Zygphil replies, and this has the perfect amount of trepidation attached for Severus to find himself giving in.

"I'll be in the Great Hall around sunrise tomorrow morning. You may come to see me then."

And he whirls away, looking briefly over the potions at the other tables and feeling a nagging sensation poking deep inside his throat, suspicion bestirring at the sudden obtestation for help.

The class is over before he can complete the first chapter of the book from Filius. By the time the following lessons end, he's only made it into chapter three; a harrowing position in comparison to how efficiently he often finds himself able to read.

Tucking the book under his arm, he ushers his last students out of the room, double-checking to make sure his wand is still fastened safely within his robes. Locking his classroom and returning only briefly to his own quarters to fetch Lupin's forgotten coat — which smells like vanilla, coffee and almond (and he pretends not to notice) — he rushes out of the school before anyone harbors even the slightest suspicion that he's gone.

A pen and notepad are tucked into his inner robe pocket for scientific purposes, a sterling silver fork also at the ready in case he somehow needs to stick Remus with it (this whole silver fork thing was Lupin's suggestion; Snape went along with it even though he found it dumb and pointless to carry a fork around for the purpose of scaring off a ruthless supernatural beast). The partially-melted December snow crunches under his laced shoes, his robes intercepting the zephyr of early winter as he jogs out past the school grounds and over to the periphery of the forest, slowing down as he approaches the willow tree he remembers unpleasantly well.

Remus is sitting on one of the few dry spots there are, having been waiting there presumably for a long time. He looks devilishly benumbed, to which Severus remembers his coat and hands it over to him.

"Thank you," Lupin breathes, shivering as he slips it over his shoulders, and Snape doesn't respond. "Fixed your spell yet?"

"I'm far from it," Severus drones. "My predicament is insufferable."

Remus nods quickly; a blatant attempt at dodging anxiety. "What about your reading? Anything interesting?"

Severus makes as if he doesn't have a refutation. "Is it necessary to you, Lupin, that you know so much?"

The question, although rhetorical, seeps into the essence of all that Remus Lupin is, softening his shoulders and turning his mouth up into a playful smile. He smiles like a young boy. The charm is vexatiously inconvenient.

"One hundred percent."

Severus cannot deny to himself how endearing that statement is, but he sighs as if he doesn't think it and sits down next to him. Deciding to finally answer his question, Snape kicks a bit of snow with the sharp edge of his heel and takes his new book out from under his elbow.

"I assume you're familiar with the concept that a spell is only effective due to the words attached to it," he says, and it isn't a question, but Remus nods anyway.

"Yes."

Severus flips through the pages. "This book presents a theory which is so sensical I may as well present it to you as a fact," he continues, stopping on the forty-second page and handing the book over. "The second paragraph there. It's hypothesized that it's not the words themselves that make things happen but rather the meanings that we ourselves, as a race of species, have connected to the words."

Lupin doesn't read it, but keeps the book held safely in his grip nevertheless. "The hell's that supposed to mean?"

"It means, you imbecilic bat of an audience, that the word 'wizard' only has the effect that it does because that's what humans have decided it purports," Snape reiterates. "Thenceforth, spells, which rely on words, only work because of the meanings we attach to them ourselves. We can say one thing and mean another, and, although incredibly advanced as a skill, that's when we can harness change in our incantation results."

Remus is quiet as he listens, looking softly over at him as he passionately explains his findings, looking as if he's hearing the most beguiling conceptualization in the world.

"This is why intention is the ultimate control; it's the root of all of it," Snape finishes, taking the book back and setting it on another dry spot next to them. "And perhaps my spell is going haywire because of my own doing. Equally, perhaps the first book was correct and it's working against me like a rebellious child."

"Rebellious child," Remus mirrors with a snort. "Soon enough it'll start sneaking out behind your back so it can go get laid, attain interest in Marxism, and become severely addicted to heroin."

"And in that order," Severus adds with a smirk. Remus chuckles and leans back against one of the rocks behind him.

"You'll have to bring it to therapy for that," he remarks loosely, though his bearing becomes more impliable, anxious as the sun sets lower and lower, the sky turning a deep ash gray.

"Not with my paycheck," Severus replies, though it's barely even a joke. Remus laughs anyway.

A stillness follows, the two of them surveying the sky as if it's the last time they'll ever see it, experiencing the sensation of the enveloping gray washing into their own bloodstreams like tides through sand. The sun is no longer unconcealed, the world wrapped under a shaded stratum, the air cold and unwithered and pristine. Watching it almost makes one feel as if they don't have a problem in the world. Or that, if they do have a problem, they don't mind its existence much at all. It's a beautiful feeling, and it's a beautiful sky. They breathe it all in accordingly.

There's a small hesitance, and Remus looks down at the snow-dusted grass.

"I'm... glad you're here," he says, and Severus turns, stricken by the sentence.

"You...?" he chokes out, turning it over in his head, trying to make sense of it. "Why?"

And Lupin rigidifies even more, his jaw tightening against itself, his eyes dropping as he looks down at his own fidgeting hands.

"Because the last time I shifted," he explains, his words so suddenly quiet, so frangible, so apologetically soft, "was the first time I did it alone."

Even his hands stop moving now, and he stares brokenly down at the petrified fingers. Snape takes a long, silent breath in, as if the wave of empathy undergone in receipt of the sentence has hit him with a legitimate physical blow.

How could he not have realized such an assertion anterior to it having been mentioned? Of course last time was Lupin's first time alone. All the people that used to join him have left his company. They've gone. The nights of running side-by-side with his nearest connections have come to a close. For both of them, there's nobody now; the curtain has descended, the spotlights unlit, the stage vacated entirely. It's lonely, and everything has changed.

Severus wants to disaffirm the profound feeling of empathy cursing his thoughts. He attempts to wish it away, but it sits there still. It's exacting for him to notice that it breathes and beats for his very heart and lungs. It means he cares, and he doesn't want to care about anything.

Yet here he is.

Setting his jaw, he glares ahead of him at the skyline without deviation, watching the world become eloquently darker as the minutes fall past them. Remus glances over in his direction, clearing his throat in emotional despotism and trying to fill the silence so he can be deflected from it all.

"You don't have to say anything," he adds. "I know how you are. Your silence is good enough."

Severus doesn't move, his very functioning in a complete state of petrification, attempting to not let on the occupancy of his commiseration and moral humanity.

"My silence means nothing, Lupin," he bites back, but the words leave his lips infirmly, and his voice breaks into a whisper somewhere in the middle of it all. Remus, perceiving the pretense but abominating the aim, looks away at the darkening sky.

"We should get inside now," he propounds with a diversion of theme, and it's more of a soft order than a slight implication. "Follow me, and be quick."

He stands up, approaching the willow tree, which sits drowsing ahead of them. Severus follows him cautiously as they loom toward its roots with complete silence, Snape distinguishes the cavern beneath one of them just as Lupin hops carefully down into it. Although there are ways to paralyze the tree temporarily, Remus has figured out that it's harmless to travel beneath it given that it isn't disturbed, and any cruelty that can be avoided, in his eyes, absolutely should be.

Severus stands out in the cold for a bit, enfolding his robes tighter around himself and awaiting some sort of kinesics show. But Remus appears again in a few short moments, offering a hand out to help guide him in.

"Come on," he whispers, so as not to discomfit the highly-quarrelsome foliage just above them.

"Does it not strike you as far more sensible to shift before going inside?" Snape asks quietly, although the statement is mainly a response to his own anxiety making a move at prolonging his time outside of an enclosed underground space.

"Actually," Remus contradicts, "this way is a lot easier on your end. Because we'll be sneaking through the ground into a building with doors and rooms and escape routes, you have things to hide behind and trap me in, lest anything goes... awry."

His hand remains, palm open, under the dark gray clouds. The rest of him waits underneath the ground in the tunnel Severus has entered once in his life and isn't keen on returning to. Snape stares at it in nauseous equivocation, dread weighting his stomach while Remus continues to coax him in.

"Do it, Snape," he commands. "We haven't much time. Now is the moment to follow me in before it's too late and your little science experiment doesn't go just as you planned it."

And he's right. Severus hates it, but it's true. He needs to meliorate his Wolfsbane if necessary, and he won't even know how to fix it unless he sees it in action; records what must be changed.

So, with a sigh of resignation, he squats next to the tunnel and prepares to slide himself down into it, oscillating before deciding on accepting Lupin's kind gesture of giving him a supporting hand. His fingers slip into Remus' warm palm. They grip it softly, and are tenderly underpinned in return while Snape lowers himself down into the passageway under the dark, encasing earth.

Lupin rests his other hand on Snape's ribs as he slips through the entrance and reaches the tightly-packed ground. For a moment, they stay that way, still and silent, one hand in the other's, one hand on a side. Severus notices briefly that his own fingers have luxuriated themselves, now sprawled out opulently on the werewolf's shoulder. Something about this fact makes him deeply distressed with himself, but he can't bring his own hand to move away. He stays tethered to the man ahead, almost savoring the gentle touch he's giving him, gripping to it like a lifeline. It's safe. It's secure. The perfect recipe for something he can't refuse.

In the damp underground darkness, the only thing they can hear is the sound of their own heartbeats. All they feel is their own breathing. They see nothing at all.

But Remus lights his wand once they both come to terms with this, the soft blue glow sketching the outline of his genuinely warm smile as he looks down on Severus, who promptly reintroduces himself to reality and pulls his hands away. They pace down the inestimable length of the tunnel then, making their way through its veers and concavities until they reach a ladder and a panel above their heads, which Lupin nudges up and out of the way as he climbs into the building above.

Severus follows, refusing any physical help this time as he pulls himself up through the floor of the Shrieking Shack, a place that gives him only the most mephitic of memories; memories that he decides to disregard rather than dwell on. He has an experiment to burnish, after all. He doesn't need echoes of his far-gone childhood forcing themselves in the way.

"If you'll follow me upstairs," Remus says, heading for a stairwell on the other side of the room, "there's a bedroom up there with a lot less visibility to the outside world. People might see us from the front windows if we're down here."

Snape doesn't respond, but trails behind him anyway, the silence making him very aware of his own breathing while he walks in the path of Remus Lupin and his shaded wandlight.

They reach the next floor in a few more steps, Remus leading the way into the room straight ahead and closing the door behind them, drawing all the shades. And then, jokingly, he turns back.

"Don't mind the bed in the corner," he jests, although there's a deeply-rooted sense of fretfulness behind it. "This isn't a come-on or anything."

Snape avoids the remark. He doesn't want to think about it too much.

"Is there anything you... require... during this process?" he questions, retrieving his notepad and pen from his inner pockets and flipping open the cover. Remus begins pacing, clearly in soreness but too hysterical to stop himself from further inflaming it.

"Just stay calm," he breathes. "That's all I ask. It'll be fine."

Snape readies his pen, taking a mental note of the aforementioned request and a physical note of the man's current mental state:

Pacing. Fidgety. Clear sense of dread. Anxiety. Fear of being seen.

"I assume I'm permitted to ask at this time," Snape drawls, poising the nib of his writing utensil between the top two note lines. "Have there been any unpleasant aspects of your potion thus far that you wish to be changed?"

Remus stops, squinting his eyes shut as he tries to deliberate. His shoulders are tense, his face almost in agony, even though the most unendurable segment of his night hasn't even hit him yet.

"I don't know," he decides. "I'm currently out of sorts. The wolf — I can feel it creeping in. I can't think. Ask me tomorrow."

Severus adds another note: Jumbled thoughts. Mental presence of wolf.

"Anything at all that you could come up with? Are you feeling any divergently than you were last month?" he continues, even though Lupin's response was designed to obviate this interrogation altogether.

"I hate to make you uncomfortable," Remus says, dodging the question, or, perhaps, not even hearing it, "but I have to undress in order to keep my clothes in tact." And his vest is already off, a sort of antipathetic fear of his frequent bête noire glinting over his eyes as Snape raises a brow.

"There are no means of heating this building," he remarks. "You could suffer from hypothermia in only an instant."

Remus tosses his button-down shirt on top of his discarded vest, undoing the clasp on his trousers, at which point Severus makes a mental effort to focus on his notes. "I can't afford to buy a new closet every month," he replies as the trousers — and then all undergarments — become completely thrown aside. "I can't afford anything."

Snape almost offers his cloak, but he holds himself back. He's cared too much today. He doesn't want it to become a regularity.

But the quandary of undress doesn't last for long, because his thoughts are interrupted by a low groan of excruciating pain.

Whipping his head back to watch Remus, Severus barely cares that he's in the nude anymore. He hardly registers it at all. He surveys the man, unable to move as his eyes lock on the changing person in front of him. He forgets about his note-taking completely; both his pen and notepad fall quietly to the floor as he finds solace cowering back against the wall.

All at once, slowly but not slowly enough, quickly but still so delayed, Remus Lupin shifts.

At first it's nothing physical. Remus appears exactly the same for a long time, curled up on his knees against the floor as his cries become more cacophonous with each searing shock that hits him. The resonance hurts to even hear, the agony almost transmittable through the sound waves themselves. For a second, Severus can't quite decide whether he should jump forward and console him or jump back. But he settles on the latter, pressing himself against the wall behind him like one would hold a buoy in a storm.

And then Lupin's head whips back, and he produces a long, terrible scream.

It sounds like it comes from the most fathomless spot in his gut it feasibly is able, all his muscles tensing and convulsing as he begins to change. His eyes widening in suffering and his shoulders beginning to expand, Remus Lupin metamorphoses from man to wolf in a matter of seconds. His arms and legs extend, his jaw evolving itself completely to show a long assortment of pointed teeth, his back arching as his skin is overtaken by thick, gleaming fur.

It's excruciating, and it's breathtaking, and it's absolutely wild.

Severus finds himself kneeling with one knee on the floor, breathing heavily as his left hand grips the ground for support. He waits, inert, afeared. This is something he's never seen. He cowers like what sits before him. He cowers like the stillness of the outside wind.

And before him he sees a glorious dog. He sees an immense animal, stunned by its recent change, silhouetted softly by the thin curtains. The moonlight sifts through, bouncing off of its shoulders and each meticulous, minuscule tendril of fur. Its muscles twitch, resetting themselves into their own places, and its eyes blink placidly at the dark room. They're a bright green-blue; the only thing that hasn't really changed. It's a beautiful animal. Regal, respectable, solid and sturdy and strong. Severus finds himself having consternation regarding it for minutes on end.

But the wolf simply sits on the floor, its abnormally prodigious frame softening as it gives Snape a long, harmless stare, and he remembers that Remus is still there. This thing, although a completely different physical entity, is still the exact same person he's been communicating with for the past hour; the past month. He necessitates himself to let go of the fear; to embrace the science behind it. And so he does, and rules in an instant that he pedestals the animal above anything else. This is one of the few times in his life that he's ever been so intensely flooded with respect. With appreciation.

He respects the very idea of being entrusted enough to be sanctioned to witness such a unique process; one not many people see firsthand in such a safe way. He respects the man inside the wolf for undergo such anguish every three weeks and for never letting it control his existence. For focusing on what the world has to offer as opposed to what it doesn't.

Up until tonight, Severus has never had the chance to see someone with lycanthropy shift in the uninterrupted manner which he just has. Until now, he's never been able to grasp how terrible and savage and horrendously beautiful it is.

But now he has. Now he sees the anguish. He sees what Remus Lupin lives with. And he respects him so much more.

Forcing himself to his feet, Severus takes a few slow steps forward, prudently making certain that Remus is still entirely coherent and aware — entirely himself — before reaching out his outstretched fingers in offering. The wolf, moving just as mildly, equates its nose with Snape's palm, closing its eyes in comfort as Severus moves his hand to stroke the fur on the top of its head. It's soft and clean and warm, just like Remus himself.

The wolf falls asleep nearly an hour later, curled up on the old mattress in the corner as Severus soothes it gently over the head. Its eyes close, its breath deepening, its body halting all movement aside from the loom and pitch of its chest, and Snape stands to his feet.

Replevying his notes from the floor, he jots down the general information regarding the matter of Lupin's shifting period to the best of his propensity, along with a few quick sketches, plus a more itemized drawing of the sleeping wolf in front of him.

Potion is functional, he adds, meaning that it succeeds at taking away the violence of the animal. I believe Remus kept his mind. If not, he's simply a very docile wolf on his own — very unlikely.

Closing his notepad and putting all his things back into his pockets, Severus outreaches for the bundle of Lupin's clothes on the floor, folding them carefully — although he isn't sure why — and stowing them on the corner of the mattress. Then, reaching for a blanket from the other side of the room (Remus will be unendurably cold otherwise when he turns back to his furless self), he places it over the wolf's shoulders and heads for the door.

His breath is cragged and disproportionate, his mind full of new information; new experiences. For a moment he isn't even sure if it's right to leave the wolf here like this. But he also isn't sure if it's right to stay. So, since seclusion is better, in his mind, than being intruded upon, he turns back out of the room, lighting his wand and pulling the door shut behind him.

He leaves as quickly and with as much softness as autumn did. Silently, with not even a footstep clicking on the stair or the creak of the panel in the downstairs floor, Severus Snape is gone.


	13. 𝚇𝙸     >>     𝙾𝙵 𝙶𝚁𝙰𝚅𝙴𝚂, 𝙾𝙵 𝚆𝙾𝚁𝙼𝚂, 𝙰𝙽𝙳 𝙴𝙿𝙸𝚃𝙰𝙿𝙷𝚂

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slight content warning for non-graphic/minimally-descriptive vomiting.

< 1 MONTH, 1 WEEK, 4 DAYS >

"Severus."

A lambency on his arm. The snake turning red, breathing in, becoming sentient. And then a child, solus, feart, sitting in front of him on the floor. A dark presence to his left. One he remembers too well. The densest poltergeist he's ever handled.

The child is a girl. Dark-skinned, dark-haired. Somewhere around ten years old. Somebody loves her. Somebody has noticed that she's missing, or they will soon. She is crying. Severus instinctually yearns to assist her, to succor her, to kneel down and tell her that it will all be just fine, but he alas cannot. He's suspended there in place, his wand more scalding in its place under his robes than it has ever before burned.

A breath. "My Lord."

"You know you must do it," the reply comes. "You must either do it or you must watch."

His mind birls. It spins like the thick forces of a tempest, each thought magnetizing itself to others, expanding and expanding still as he scrambles for methods to extricate himself from all that has ever led up to this. This was entirely a misreckoning; every bleeding second of it. Joining this way of life, sacrificing all he has ever been, sacrificing this girl, should never have happened. Shielding his thoughts from the man next to him, he attempts to prolong the small, innocent life before him for as long as he can. And, truth be told, he cannot kill it himself. He can't kill anything when asked. He doesn't bear the strength.

He repeats the same excuse. Like a broken record, the same words fall that land every single time.

"If I am to spy for you," he replies, keeping his tone emotionless, his eyes denuded of every light he's ever seen, "I think it may be wise, My Lord, to note that I cannot have blood on my hands. My ties with the people you look for will be severed more quickly than the life itself. I will never secure an occupation there. We will know nothing."

So he is obligated to watch. He sees the extensive, waxen wand point forward. He makes torturous eye contact with the broken little girl. 

It's seasonable that Voldemort is looking away and cannot see the sentiment that forces itself into Snape's cavernous, shadowed irises. He forces a smile at her, as if to say that it will be alright, that this isn't the last of her, that he'll be able to help her afterward. But they both know that he cannot.

Her eyes are defenseless and vast, painting canyons beneath the pressure of every wave in the vehement sea. They are full of life and love and opportunity. They have so much to survive for.

But they do not stay alive for it.

The curse hits her, and it's meteoric and bright and painless, but Severus still cannot help himself from looking slightly to the side; just enough so it appears as if he's watching with the contentment of a cat on a fishbowl, but he contrastingly sees not a thing.

The girl is limp, and she is gone, and he wishes her well.

"A fine performance, My Lord," he wrenches out, knowing that he'll be bedeviled by tears and sobs and existential hopelessness as soon as he's out of his watch. Voldemort displays a shimmer of pride, and his wand is tucked away. "What, if I may ask, was the name of that one?"

"Lottie," the Dark Lord replies triumphantly. "Charlotte Athens-Breene."

The name stays with him in complete permanence. Beleaguers his every dream. Haunts him even now.

Lottie is the first of thirty-seven children Snape has had to watch expire. He can recall each and every one of their faces, all of their eyes, and he remembers looking just vaguely away every single time. He's plagued by the lives they had. The lives he had to enable to be taken from them.

"Avada Kedavra," echoes the voice. Once. Twice. Tens and tens of times, overlapping with itself, reverberating over him time and time again. Death. Innocence. How easily they blended together. Exertion. Prolepses. Missed chances at caring for a helpless thing. Over and over and over again. 

He can never escape it. It will never leave. It stays.

"You're stuck here, Severus," the voice taunts him. "You can never leave it. It's all around you."

"Kill the girl, Severus," it coerces further. "You can't leave. Succumb. Kill the girl. Kill the girl. Kill the girl. Kill, kill, kill, kill—"

He awakens with a jolt in the very early morning, his room entirely lightless, the moon still high in its bearings atop the skyline. 

He cannot, for the life of him, get back to sleep.

So he stays awake, igniting his fireplace and sitting in front of it, holding a glass of whiskey loosely in his right hand and staring into the flames. To pretermit the chill of his own ephialtes, he lets himself wonder how Remus is doing. He wonders if he's awake, too.

He wonders if he's still in affliction; if he still feels the way he did when he shouted so ferociously. He wonders if such a process repeats itself when he turns back to his typical form; if it's all just an attestation of its genesis. Although of course, regardless of what happens and what is true, Snape can't bring himself to fathom the fact that he hasn't known about the torture of lycanthropy at all. He's been so blind to it, thinking it was a minor event every once in a while; something one could handle accordingly with the right mixture of herbs. But he was wrong. Changing is so much more. Lupin is so much stronger than he's ever realized.

Severus scolds himself for thinking about him so much.

If he's candid with himself, Remus has been taking up most of his headspace ever since he abetted him with his relabeling of the jars in his classroom. He's taken up more and more leeway over and betwixt the rest of his thoughts as he's grown to know him with so much prepended depth, his earth-toned sweaters and plant-filled home making abundant manifestations as he's begun to associate other things with them. Like scones, for example. He can no longer look at a scone without remembering the time Remus importuned that he bring one home with him, and he can't feel even the lightest deluge on his skin without thinking of the man touching his shoulder outside in the storm. He can't listen to music without hearing the added static of his record player; can't see a silver spoon without the memento of his voice in the Great Hall asking for a wooden one.

It makes him want to curl away from his body; to sunder his soul from the rest of himself. He doesn't favor that his entire life now revolves partially around a job and partially around another man. A man. Why is he thinking about a man?

What's worse is the way he's been thinking about him. The manner in which Remus intersects Snape's memories is convivial and easing, not only in a friendly way but in a way that is strangely warm. The kind of way where even knowing he's nearby in the jilted shack a mile off makes Severus feel as if he's wholly secure and has nothing to fret over at all. He wants to see him again. Soon. He tells himself he must.

It's the thoughts like this that vex him.

These are the thoughts he would have about Lily, and he nearly wishes that's how it could still be. He wants to still be focused on her; to be honorable of her death, to grieve her with as much depth and turmoil as he had for the first few weeks of her absence. But, like all loss, it's slowly ebbed away and has become a soft, dull stab. And his involvement in her life, in her personality, her comfort, has all been replaced. And it's been replaced by a sodding man. A childhood enemy, at that. The bane of his very foundation.

It has taken much honesty for himself to admit that he thinks about Lupin in this way. He's had to break down many walls to stop denying it. He's had to open his mind so far. And yet, ironically, even though he's now more accepting of his own head than he's perchance ever been, with this comes some of the strongest and deepest sense of self-disgust he's ever managed.

Severus rests the bridge of his nose between his first two fingers, closing his eyes and desiderating the thoughts away. Whatever this focus on Remus is, he wants to forget it. He wants it to leave him. He wants to feel normal when he isn't around; to feel independent and separate and emotionally unchangeable. He wants to be able to greet everyone he knows with that same quantum of detachment. He doesn't want the boy to make him bend over backwards to care for him. He's sick of caring. He doesn't want it. It makes him nauseous to know that he does.

But no matter how many times he decides this, irrespective of the amount of energy he puts into making a change, all his thoughts and preoccupations wind back to the mental image of the wolf, gleaming and muscular and powerful, majestic beneath the glow of the bright white moon, and the soft, silken person inside of it.

That damn wolf. How he respects the thing.

He sighs, downing his last sip of whiskey and slamming the glass down on the side table next to him. Deciding to think about something else — anything else — he grabs his books and notes, snatching a pen as he does, and leaves his room.

He hasn't bothered to wear his cloak. Something's different today. Something has loosened. Somehow he feels as if there's less of a prerequisite to cover up; like there's less to hide. Like he's slowly unearthing more and more, opening up to his own self, and becoming less obscured as a result to everybody else.

So he hurries down the hall in his dark tunic coat and his fitted trousers, bathing in the darkness of the long halls like Eve in the beauty of the Garden of Eden. He isn't at all surprised to be the only one out and awake at such an early hour, but he still turns each corner with a disreputable glare ahead, expecting to catch at least one student out against school orders. But he finds nothing. Not even Filch's cat makes an appearance, and he clinches that he's completely alone in this wide expanse of a building.

He infiltrates himself into the Great Hall, pleasantly surprised to see that there's already hot coffee awaiting him. Approaching the machine, he reads the gold-engraved letters on the label attached to it, grabbing a mug as he does.

The New Beanstant Brew —  
Automatically preparing  
coffee from the moment   
your employees wake to  
the second they sleep!

He raises his eyebrows, frowning in consideration. How annoyingly convenient. How dare a machine care for him more than another real person is capable.

Pouring some milk and sugar into a mug with the steaming liquid, he stirs it with the one wooden spoon he picked absentmindedly from the pile close by. It's rough and solid in his hands; warm. It's no wonder that Remus asks for wood before he asks for gold. There's a smoothness in a wooden spoon that metals cannot quite seem to harness. Not quite at all.

He seats himself at the long Ravenclaw table, setting his books down on the old stained planks and holding the hot coffee to his cold, still lips. Taking a small sip, he decides it tastes strange when mixed with the slight modicum of whiskey, although it's pleasant. So strangely balmy, regardless of temperature.

But he forces the thought of warmth away. All thoughts that he associates with the sensation lead back to someone he's trying to distract himself from. Forget warmth. Forget Remus, even if only for now.

Severus has other things to think about. He has a spell to trial, children to instruct, a plan to formulate with the Order, and a decision to make concerning his loyalty. He has something to decide for Albus.

It's strange how easily he's forgotten about it; how easily the request to be a double agent for the rest of his life has been put on the back-burner of his prioritized thinking. He hasn't given it even a second of his time since it was asked until now; almost twenty-four hours later. He's too disconcerted. He deems it unsettling.

And he has to make a decision. But why is he so tentative?

Being the same person that begged Dumbledore to protect the Potters; the same person that said he would do anything to keep Lily safe, the person who mourned her — and is still mourning her, although less so — for weeks on end, he finds it strange to be so hesitant about such a moral decision. This is the one way he can live up to giving her away to the dark. This is the one thing he can do to compensate.

And yet it's heavier than the future held in Albus' desk pen, and it's darker than the bright gold nib. It's confusing, and it's completely altering, and it consumes him, or, presumably, will.

He sighs and forces himself to wake up a bit, resting his face in his palms as he thinks. Things are changing and responsibilities are falling into place so quickly that it's almost like he barely has time to breathe. But he forces himself to breathe anyway, in, out, in, until he's equanimous about it all again.

Spying wouldn't be too terrible. He would have to brush up on his Legilimency, specifically the Occlumency portion of it, and he'd have to create an improved personal schedule, but it would be manageable.

But for how long?

If he agrees, Snape will have to do this for possibly the rest of his entire life. No breaks, no holidays. This will be how he lives. Forever.

Can he even handle how his life is now for so long?

He unburies his face from where it rests in his cold, dry palms. The truth is that he will just simply have to. It doesn't even matter whether or not he thinks he can. Somehow, strangely, that is one hundred percent beside the point.

The torrid, saccharine coffee calms him as it runs through his body, his sips small but routine, the caffeine taking only minutes to kick in. He wonders how much sleep he's had in the past week. Twelve hours? Ten?

He wonders also if he'll ever sleep a full night again.

He sits there for hours, not quite aware of much around him, stuck between sleeping and being more awake than he's ever been. Because he's too tired to sleep. Too awake to dream. Thinking is all he can do. 

The sun rises adagietto as he sits there, the room unhurriedly growing brighter until it's a light brownish-gray, the early morning clouds filtering light through the tall windows surrounding him. Footsteps eventually present themselves in the room, and Snape lifts his disinclined gaze to see Fallon Zygphil approximating his position to that of the coffee machine.

"Don't mind if I use this, do you?" he asks, not waiting for a response before pouring himself a mug. "Even though I'm certainly not an employee, I'd imagine you're lenient on the rule considering it's seven in the morning, I'm unbearably tired, my life is terrifying, and we're only what, five years apart?"

"Mm. Try six." 

Severus makes his papers and books into a tidy stack on the long dining table as Zygphil sits across from him, drinking his coffee with a nauseated grimace presenting itself across his lips.

"Good lord, how long have you been up, mate?" he asks, swallowing painfully. "This is all cold. Your cute little colleagues are gonna hate you for waking so soon."

They hate me already, Severus thinks to himself as he takes a quick breath in. "You have an irritating amount of business here, Zygphil; relay to me coherently what it is and do not waste my time."

Fallon nods, setting his cold mug down on the table and settling his shoulders with a long sigh. "This is going to sound really, really strange, but I need you to understand me."

Snape stares back expectantly, giving no assurances aloud but not denying a guarantee, either. Zygphil purses his lips and taps his fingers rhythmically on the wooden planks beneath them.

"It's my sister," he finally says. "And I know you're going to think this sounds stupid, but I'm terribly concerned. She isn't herself, and I mean this completely literally. She's been acting so strangely, saying things I know she never would, moving and speaking in manners I've never seen from her before. After coming back to class when they healed her finger, she's been completely different, and I'm absolutely terrified. Me. Scared of Afton. My own sister."

The tap for the flow of words freezes over and closes. The monologue stops, leaving little immediate effect on Severus' conscience as their initial connotations don't strike him as legitimately concerning in the least.

"I'm not displeased, Zygphil, that you hold me in such high respect to be dealt your insignificant schoolboy drama," he drawls, closing his eyes in debility and leaning his jaw on his own hand, "although I most plainly do not understand in which universe this would be labeled as even slightly urgent."

But the anxiety creeps back into his bloodstream as Zygphil stays unmoved, untamed, his point not at all disproven by Snape's lack of involvement.

"Typically, Professor, neither would I," he replies undeviatingly, "but she can't even answer questions about her own name." He takes a second for the sentence to embed itself into the walls of the room, leaning forward across the table and lowering his voice as if there's anyone else there to feasibly monitor such confessions.

"Professor Snape," he breathes, his eyes bold and uneasy and fluid, "I don't think it's my sister in there."

Snape is silent, staring him down. Zygphil runs his finger in circles around the rim of his cup.

"I had to come to you because I don't know if the anyone else would listen," he confesses. "McGonagall wouldn't, and Flitwick would brush it off; I know it for a fact. I know Slughorn would care, but he's gone, and you're merely all I've got. You seem more understanding than the others. Don't prove me wrong."

Severus scoffs, sliding his empty mug away from his place at the table and opening a book to look like he has things to do. "Slughorn is an absolute imbecile," he spits. "Of course he would."

Fallon sighs, closing his eyes and fixing him with a state of obstinacy. "Can you at least try to help me?" he asks, and Severus returns his state with one of complete sarcastic cynicism.

"What sort of senseless foul play do you surmise this is, Zygphil?" he asks. His lips smirk against their own will. His student shakes his head.

"I don't know," he admits. "I can never be completely certain. All I can tell you is what I've already relayed. I just need your support, no matter how willing you are to actually give it."

"And so you have it," Snape adjudicates halfheartedly, "though I assume you have the basic understanding necessary to accept that, without any substantive corroboration, you are entirely on your own. You are free to console in me if there are any tremendous explosions of information or... legitimate... emergencies."

Fallon looks immediately relieved, chugging his lukewarm coffee and standing up from the table. "Thank you," he says earnestly. "Thank you so much. I'll keep tabs on her. I'm just glad you know. Thank you."

And he rushes out of the Great Hall again just as the other staff members begin to trickle in like termites from a lead pipe.

"And a good morning to you, Severus," Minerva greets him as she sits, dressed in a deep red robe. Snape regards her with a brief nod and a quick retaliative response.

"A tolerable awakening to you as well," he counters as Filius reaches for the coffee machine. "Although, in such a line of work, it may be doleful at best."

Minerva's lips tense themselves into a stifled smirk of amused agreement, shrugging and giving a long sigh. "Oh, well," she reserves. "There isn't really much one can do about these things. It comes and goes, the existentialism. The grief. This morning does bring less of it than usual, I suppose. Perhaps it's the turning of the new moon."

"Who made the blasted coffee cold again?" Flitwick scolds bitterly into his mug, and McGonagall nods in his direction.

"I spoke too soon," she retrocedes. "There it is. The pain, bringing itself to us in the bleak form of cold coffee."

Snape glares at the machine as if it's the one responsible. "You'd think, with such magical design about it, the application would know to keep it warm in the event that the first employee to use it is awake hours too early out of insomnia."

"And you'd think," McGonagall shoots back, "that with such magical design about it, this entire school would make itself immune to the heat of interconnectional irritation." She tilts her head in the direction of Flitwick, who grumbles in irascibility at his cup as he brings it to the table. Severus, eager to get out of his way to avoid coffee-related confrontation, changes the subject as quickly as he can muster.

"Is Albus up yet?" he inquires, and Minerva shakes her head.

"No, I'm afraid not," she replies. "He was up late, I believe. Talking to Pomfrey about something that sounded most serious. Not sure what it was, exactly, but I assume he won't be present for, at minimum, the next few hours."

"Then I require that you let him in on why I won't be present at breakfast," Snape replies, closing his books and stacking them as he prepares to leave. "I have to take notes on the after-effects of my serum on Remus Lupin. As it is Saturday, students won't be seeing me at all; I suspect there will be no grief on their ends due to the fact, but I mustn't be absent in unexplainable instances."

"Ah, it's Remus," Minerva replies nonchalantly. "I suppose I could have figured that one myself in under a second of concentration."

Snape stands, picking up his things and giving her a long look. "You say this as if there's meaning behind its such straightforward nature."

"Oh, don't put a splint in your wand, now. It's basic common knowledge that you're spending nearly every waking minute with the man," McGonagall remarks with a look of utter casualty. "Albus has been especially intrigued by the fact indeed. We all have, of course. No point treating it like some secret."

Severus pauses. "Nothing... is a secret."

Minerva shrugs then, waving a limp hand at him in dismissal. "Well, go on, then. Your thing that isn't a secret is waiting for you, I assume."

"Tell Albus I'm gone," Snape dismisses flatly, and McGonagall nods.

"I most certainly will do."

Dropping his books off briefly in his office, Severus soon batters his way out of the nearest outlet and heads directly to the shack, taking the long tunnel as efficiently as he can and pushing up the panel in the floor with such force he isn't even sure it's from himself that the energy is thrust. Gliding up the stairs not unlike Shakespearean royalty, he knocks roughly on the old wooden door and pushes it prudently ajar.

He's received by the effluvium of vomit and a still-undressed and very human presentation of Remus Lupin, who has oriented himself face-down upon the mattress in the corner of the room, his lungs shuddering in pain as they breathe. He doesn't even move as Severus steps toward him, quietly disinfecting the floor of its veil of ejecta with a few flicks of his wand and taking his clothes from their untouched pose where he last left them.

"Lupin," he greets him, indistinct, leery, crouching down next to him with his articles of clothing. "A tumultuous morning, I assume."

Remus merely groans in return. Snape omits it, settling a hand on his shoulder and coaxing him to sit up. Slowly, he leans him back against the wall, handing him his clothes stiffly and trying not to touch him too much.

"I recommend at least putting on your pants."

Remus complies, his movements whetted and slow, his breath coming in with denticulate beats each time he bends his leg wrong or leans too hard against his back. Once he finally has a bit of dignity to his name, Snape helps him back into his shirt, pulling his arms through the sleeves like one would a child and assisting him further as he slips into his trousers.

Remus finally speaks. It's the most painful whisper Earth itself has known.

"Hurts."

"Mm, yes. Well," Severus replies counteractively, "that is to be expected. I suggest making an attempt — regardless of how feeble — to stand up; bringing you to a more accessible location as you rest is ideal."

Remus is weak and shaky as he tries to push himself to his feet. His knees immediately giving out, he's snatched by Snape as he keels forward, supported by his arms as they slowly make their way to the door.

"Do cognize that this rate of speed in our travel is due to be changed. In the past few minutes we've made it across the room alone," Severus urges. "I could easily levitate you through the—"

"Mm-mm," Remus declines with a swift shake of his head, pausing to gather his bearings and force out an explanation: "Tunnel's small. Always bump into it. Walk."

Snape takes a long breath in, presupposing that the post-transition stage of lycanthropy is the rootlet neath Lupin's blatant lack of judgment, and phrases his next sentence as delicately as he can.

"You'll freeze to death before you come to your senses enough to see that what you just uttered may be one of the most brainless statements ever spat out by any member of the human race since the Neanderthals themselves," he replies lightly, and Remus isn't even in high enough spirits to smirk at it. He remains there with that agonized, stone-faced, glazed-eye look about him, his jaw biting fiercely against itself to internally fight the discomfort of it all. "Less perspicacious than their devolved little phrases. More foolish than all their... oogas and boogas and... glonks."

But this comment, although it on a typical day would be much appreciated, isn't even heard by Lupin at all. His eyes are still fixed away, the pain still marbling their surface. Snape, watching him with a sense of lostness hitting his lungs, pauses, sighs, and grudgingly steps in front of him. 

Something about the mere helplessness reminds him of the girl. Lottie. Something about the discomfort and the pain makes him want to be patient; change his past, balance out his wrongdoings.

"Get on my back," he instructs, looking down at the next flight of stairs with obnubilating dread. This sentence is one Remus responds to.

"But you're..." he argues slowly, weakly, although still obeying him as he limply wraps his arms over his shoulders, "you're so... thin and... and little."

"And my limbs work, Lupin; yours are currently indisposed," Severus counters. He upheaves Remus onto his back like a toddler, gripping his thighs to keep them out of the way of his own legs and hurrying out of the back door rather than the underground passage because, damn it all, being seen and taking a shortcut is currently far better than spending twenty minutes underground.

Remus rests his head on Snape's shoulder, seeming to nod off to sleep every few moments due to physical asthenia but waking up again seconds later. His fingers begin to turn red in the cold wind, and he subconsciously buries them under the thick fabric of Severus' outer robes.

"If you happen to projectile vomit at any point hereafter," Snape appends, putting as much certitude in his shoes to not slip on the packed-in snow as he can, "do so off to the side. I'd like my clothing to not need a deep cleaning until my next paycheck at least."

"Right," Remus murmurs out listlessly, the response taking much effort, "because every time I throw up, my first thought is... always to aim for the nearest person's robes."

"You're incapacitated," Severus dismisses, hurrying them up the hill to the entrance of the school. "You aren't allowed to make clever remarks. You are not even slightly permitted to outdo my cynicism."

"I'm..." Remus takes a shaky, pained breath. "I'm not allowed to be in this school, either, but here I..." And he cuts himself off, setting his jaw again as he's hit by another spate of muscle cramping. Snape takes this as a cue to go faster, so he does.

It's a bloody miracle that the few halls they have to go through are untenanted. Having a student see Snape carrying a vaguely familiar man on his back to his personal office without exegesis on a weekend would raise many questions indeed; questions that neither of them would like to answer regardless of how much they might be able to lie.

Severus' hands tighten instinctually on Lupin's thighs as he brushes down the winding stairs to the dungeons, and Remus takes in a sharp breath of distress, so he loosens his grip again. He can't help but note the thew of his legs, the muscle hidden beneath the slack tan trousers he always wears. Strong and sturdy, naturally attributed to his lycanthropy, but it's near unachievable to negate that noticing this has nothing to do with the scientific aspect of studying a werewolf at all. Just an observation. Perhaps he notices because it's the first time he's ever felt his legs, and possibly the last. Or perhaps it's just intriguing.

He's quick to enter his office and untwist Remus from his place on his back, sitting him down in one of his armchairs and locking the door to avoid further interference. Whisking his way over to his shelves, which now cleave to a significant amount of bottles — some labeled by Remus, some by Slughorn, and some by himself — he peers through his ingredients with great urgency, preparing empty beakers, droppers and vials as he demands a single word.

"Symptoms."

Lupin can barely bring himself to speak.

"Bad."

Snape sighs. "Specifics."

Remus just groans, turns, and, with an air of what seems almost like relief crossing his features, vomits onto the timeless stone floor.

They both stare at it, unmoved and unfazed, and Severus makes the executive decision to prepare an anti-nausea vial.

"Is this habitual for your cycle, Lupin?" he asks detachedly as Remus halfheartedly cleans up the sick with a gesture of his wand. "The discomfort? The regurgitation?"

"Mm-hmm," Remus hums in validation, nodding his head as he rests it back against the chair, closing his eyes and taking a long breath. Severus nods as he arranges some leaves and a compact, debonair knife.

"Perhaps that can be improved," he thinks aloud before setting down all his things and helping Remus up from the chair again. "But first, let's get you to a toilet lest you decide to view your past meals with your own eyes again."

Remus leans on him as he brings him to a door just past his bed, which he opens to reveal a very clean and very adequate washroom. Snape walks back to his potion-making, attempting to cover all Lupin's dreadful symptoms in one concoction alone, keeping a careful eye as Lupin leans preventatively over the toilet bowl.

"I didn't know you had your own private washroom," he says finally, and Severus raises a brow, throwing some chopped and rolled leaves into some boiling water.

"What, did you expect I shower with my own students?"

"No," Remus admits, and then laughs as he adds, "I thought you just didn't shower at all."

Although he turns away to heave into the toilet bowl, Lupin can't help but catch a glimpse of something innocent dance its way across Severus' lips. A light smile at the dry jab. A small regard for the superfluous little joke.

There's nothing left in his stomach anymore. All that comes out is air. Somehow this is worse.

Snape reoccurs by his side a short while later, a small, nebulous vial in his thin fingers. He kneels down next to Remus, opening the top and handing it over to him.

"Keep it down," he warns, "and drink it as efficiently as you can. The taste is less than favorable."

"What's in it?" Lupin asks, and a dark smirk twists itself into the expression of Severus Snape's entire being.

"Some of the most mephitic and foul plants you've ever swallowed since your mother's very accouchement," he replies. "They're terribly effective, so I advise you take the gale of an abhorrent sensation rather than dry heaving into my toilet for the rest of the day." He hands him a brass cup of water; one he's found specifically to avoid all his silver-lined mugs. "Wash it down with this. And not too fast."

The potion is silky and warm as it slips down Lupin's throat, the taste barely even terrible in relation to the sting of his own stomach contents. It takes only a few minutes to have a denouement, cooling his muscles and nerves, unbinding all his tightness, making him slump almost peacefully against the nearby cabinet with a deep sigh, his arm draped loosely over his own abdomen.

In all honesty, he still feels like utter shit. But it's better than it was.

Severus makes the offer that Remus takes a rest in his bed. And this time, Snape's bed is something that Lupin doesn't empower himself to refuse.

He's able to walk on his own now, but Snape helps him up anyway, shepherding him onto the mattress and securing a few pillows beneath his neck. He does such so impartially, his features so phlegmatic, his movements so ungiving. Outwardly, it doesn't seem as if he has a single thought attached to the gesture. Remus only knows from the small idiosyncrasies he's learned by being around him so often — the slight lift of the chin, the faint line between his brows, the outlying, unfilled eyes — that he's thinking rather much, although he's doing well at hiding it. He wonders how he's able to keep it up so seamlessly.

It's soundless for the longest time. And it's very nice. It's that same tranquil quietude they both appreciate more than the sound of life itself. Oh, to be dead and silent, if only just to escape the relentless living noise.

"Read to me," he says, unexpectedly, quaintly. But Severus barely even questions it. He falls still, his back turned as he cleans up from his potion-making, his head looking to the side in regard to the behest.

"Read what?" he returns casually, and Remus can't bring himself to think of a title in unequivocal certainty. He's frozen, arms spread out as he looks up at the dungeon ceiling, the filtering daylight laying itself across his skin, his skin that feels so hot and so cold at the same time.

He knows that it doesn't matter, as long as he will be distracted from the cold sweats and the still-slight nausea and the small waves of pain. It doesn't matter at all. Severus could read a chapter from Karl Marx and it would sound like the gates of heaven itself.

"Anything," he says, and Snape pauses, glancing over to the shelf where he keeps his absolute favorite books, a mere soupçon of the titles he still has cumulated in his sitting room on Spinner's End. His fingers outstretched, he removes one from the shelf, the blue binding imprinted with the capital words RICHARD II - WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE carved in gold on the attenuate, elegant, démodé old spine.

"Act three, scene two," he promulgates softly as he flips to a pre-bookmarked page, as if Remus even bothers. Lupin's eyes stay fixed at the ceiling, following the patterns of the stone, the dark colors graced by the soft windowlight. Severus speaks.

"No matter where – of comfort no man speak.  
Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs,  
Make dust our paper, and with rainy eyes  
Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth."

Remus feels himself getting lost in the prose, each syllable sinking into the caverns of his very ribs, the marrow itself vibrating in the rich frequencies of the poetry and the voice which speaks it. His lungs fill with it, breathe it out, breathe it in again. It's warm. It smells like dirt.

"And nothing can we call our own but death;  
And that small model of the barren earth  
Which serves as paste and cover to our bones."

And dirt is a good smell, he decides. Or, at least, it's good when Snape is the one that speaks it. And dirt smells good in the spring, when all the ice becomes once again water, the air full with the crisp, cool scent of fresh birth and death and life; of organic, natural renewal. And, even though it's the dead of winter, even though December has never felt more difficult to ignore, the words speak springtime still. Remus begins to forget the nausea, the pain, the cold sweats. He begins to forget that they are surrounded by snow, that they are inundated in darkness, that everyone they know and love is gone. Stripped away. But no more, because he forgets. In the words, in Snape's deep voice as it soothes his every fracture, it is once more the season of spring.

"Cover your heads, and mock not flesh and blood  
With solemn reverence; throw away respect,  
Tradition, form, and ceremonious duty;  
For you have but mistook me all this while," Severus goes on, his words beginning to slow, the prose coming to a slow and eventual end.

"I live with bread like you, feel want,  
Taste grief, need friends – subjected thus,  
How can you say to me, I am a king?"

The pages stop turning. The book closes. The springtime lingers in the silence it keeps.

Remus doesn't know if he's commenting on the feeling of winter's demise or the poetry itself, but he knows it works with either:

"It's beautiful."

Severus does not challenge this. "It's morbid," he adds in the template of a velitation, although it doesn't intend to disprove the remark in the least. "...but I suppose so is life."

"Yes, I suppose," Lupin agrees, his fingers tracing the sewn indents of the quilted blankets below him. "Heavenly things and macabre things often exist hand in hand. Life is balanced that way."

Snape shrugs. "I'd say they aren't separate phrases at all. The darkest shadows are the easiest to paint."

"Ah," Remus counters, hit by another wave of physical discomfort, "but monsters ruin the masterpiece of it all, don't they? They ruin it every time."

There's a lack of speaking then. There isn't any noise for a considerable amount of time. The words are left to be processed, turned over, rinsed like harvested rice, the meaning beneath them left to be appraised and reflected upon accordingly.

The reply is hesitant, yet matter-of-fact.

"You are not a monster, Remus."

Lupin scoffs, turning his eyes away from the ceiling to look upon the man before him (and what is he to him? His friend? His acquaintance? His enemy with a truce before it? It's hard to tell with the furore of it all). "And you're not a professor."

The sarcastic remark is dismissed as Severus stands up to swiftly slips the book away. "Lycanthropy is barely a condition worth the shame," he replies, tidying his bottles and jars in order to give himself something to do. He always needs to do something to preoccupy himself whilst being genuine. He's too emotionally invested, too readable, too vulnerable otherwise. "As long as you're responsible regarding your situation, there is nothing the matter with the circumstance. It's a monthly inconvenience is all."

"No," Lupin returns. "Constant inconvenience. Can't even find a job with this wolf hanging over me."

"So consider it a constant inconvenience, then," Snape modifies, "but no more. Do not consider yourself something far more gruesome than that which you are. You are not the wolf. You're a man, Remus, affected by a scientific misfortune, who has learned to control it enough for it to be, in your case, safe. Any other way of looking at it is subjective and not scientific in the least and therefore owning no credibility whatsoever. A false claim before it's even left the lips."

The pillows are quicksand as Lupin sinks farther down into them. He wouldn't mind drowning here. Drowning in softness; drowning in spring. "Don't say that to make me feel better."

Snape raises a brow as he closes the cork of an empty bottle. "Since when has that been a concern of mine?"

The question is rhetorical, and so neither of them answer it aloud. But Severus is beholden that his thoughts are buried deep within him, that his outer shell of disconnect and emotional impartiality are such a solid façade that the answer isn't revealed so easily. Because he now understands how inherent it is that he's actually cared longer than he's willing to admit. He sees that now. Hiding it from himself is useless. Everything is useless.

"I imagine they're still at breakfast," he comments, to divert his own thoughts. "I should make an appearance."

So he leaves, returning half an hour later with a croissant and a bowl of strawberries, which he sets on the nightstand next to Lupin's resting frame. He does not mention that bringing the food back was his only apologia for leaving the room at all.

And then, the sleepless nights and enfeeblement of the morning all hitting him at once, he lays perpendicularly to Remus at the foot of the bed, he, too, staring up at the ceiling until his mortal needs catch up to him with full intensity and he finally falls asleep.

Remus watches, slowly eating the strawberries out of the bowl stolen from the Great Hall. The fruit is light and sweet and the room still feels of spring and he doesn't have a care in the world.


	14. 𝚇𝙸𝙸     >>     𝙱𝚈 𝙱𝙻𝙾𝙾𝙳 𝙱𝚄𝚃 𝙽𝙾𝚃 𝙰𝙵𝙵𝙸𝙻𝙸𝙰𝚃𝙸𝙾𝙽

< 1 MONTH, 1 WEEK, 6 DAYS >

Remus has been asked, or rather ordered, to stay. Just until he feels better, of course. It's easier to tend to him without smiting his cottage with an extra guest every time it must be done. 

So he's stayed for the past two nights, him sprawled out vertically on the middle of the mattress as Severus sleeps horizontally on the end. And it's worked. Potions have been administered; books have been read. Shakespeare has been recited and it has smelt of springtime and Remus has begun to feel much better. Although he hasn't told this to Snape. He wouldn't want to be sent home so quickly. But, on the flip side, Severus hasn't asked, either. Perhaps he doesn't want him to leave just as well.

Lupin hasn't realized in full effect how lonely he is. Not until Saturday. Not until he spent his entire day with someone else. Of course it urticated him to lose James and Lily, and then Peter, and then Sirius. Oh, it hurt like hell. It was noisome shifting alone. It was egregious being the only animate being in his cottage for weeks on end. But people grow accustomed to things. People acclimate. And when this happens, they tend to forget how nice it is to actually be with someone, to have connections, to know there's always a person that is out there and willing to see you.

He's recovered almost fully from his shifting. A bit of soreness here and there, but nothing too terrible, and nothing he cannot bear himself. 

He's been taking walks around the school to stretch his muscles, lionizing the old architecture that he's so familiar with, reliving his second juvenescent home. And, with the repeated venomous reminder, "Don't let the children see you. Walk only in empty halls during classes," that Snape has given him on many occasions, he's heeded his advice, and walks now near the end of the last class period of the day, scampering down the cylindrical dungeon stairs to beat the rush of students at the end of the period.

He steps into the private office he's been staying in since Saturday morning, closing the door and pacing about the room. With it so empty like this, with only himself in it, it's exigent to determine what exactly to do.

But the dilemma doesn't last for long. The familiar sound of opening doors and scuffling feet passes the door after only a few minutes, the blether of students dying down as they exit the dungeons and the hall is once again left in silence.

And then there's dialogue again. Quieter, modulated, between Severus and someone else. Remus can't quite construe any of it, the words muffled and the voices distorted by the connecting wall between the office and the classroom, and then there's an absolute tantrum.

"You have got to be bloody kidding me."

The voice travels with renitent footfalls to the office door as the other, still calm, makes an attempt to reason with him. Remus, glaciated in form, doesn't know whether or not he should move away or hide, but he doesn't have to make the decision. The door opens and Severus storms inside, escaping a dryly irritated Minerva McGonagall standing in the doorway. And it's aimless trying to shield himself from her view; they've already made casual eye contact, and she keeps speaking as if it makes no difference to her whether or not he is present at the school.

"...truly customary to do such things in your position," she soothes, continuing whichever sentence she had started while the door was still closed. Snape brushes by Lupin as if he isn't even there, disregarding him as he sets all his class materials on his desk. "It's certainly not the emergency you deem it to be. Such drama is barely necessary, Severus. Don't pretend you're even surprised. Hello, Mr. Lupin."

Remus nods, stuck in a disoriented, confused state as Severus hurries back to the doorway, removing his top robes from their position over his tunic and flinging them angrily at his bed as if to make a statement.

"Barely necessary? I can assure you, Professor, with the entirety of my entire capability of reasoning, that perhaps it isn't my reaction that is unnecessary but rather the subject at which I am reacting to begin with," he speaks, quickly, heated, his long, black hair jumping in front of his own face as he snarls at the woman.

"Well, whether or not this is true," Minerva replies, completely unfazed at the extreme reaction, "this is what house representatives have been doing at this school for thousands of years. Prepare for it accordingly; your willingness to participate will change close to nothing."

"I will bind your lips to your teeth," Snape spits back at her. "I will drive a needle through both and stitch them together for hours upon morbid, excruciating, lamenting hours so that never again will you be able to speak."

But Minerva isn't swayed, giving a tight-lipped smile at the remark and offering a casual statement in return. "Oh, you've too soft a heart, my boy."

And then Severus slams the door, securing the locks and rushing back over to his desk, where he sits back in his chair and covers his face with his overtaxed, fretful hands. McGonagall's footsteps slowly fade out and away. Remus blinks.

"The bloody fuck was that?" he asks, and Snape's hands run through his hair as he relishes his own malaise.

"Shut up, Remus; I'm busy."

"Busy with what?" Lupin stabs back. "You're not doing anything."

"I have things to take care of. Things of which you don't need to be made aware."

Remus rests himself on the chair opposite Severus, crossing one leg over the other and raising a brow. Since when have all his grievances not been relayed? He's told him every little thing down to his stupid spell, for the welfare of all that is and isn't naturally pietistic.

"Oh, but do understand that this only intrigues me further," he replies. "I think I do."

It's quiet. Remus bends down to peek at Severus' face.

"Tell me."

Snape sighs, resting his forehead in his hand and setting his pen down. "I have to teach the bloody Slytherin students how to dance for the Yule Ball."

And then it's quiet again. The hilarity of the fact that this statement is unconditionally serious strikes Remus straight across the nose, and he's in silent shock for a long while before snorting at the histrionics surrounding this terribly unchallenging and immaterial task. "You don't have to do that now," he retorts. "And therefore you are, if my calculations are so accurate, not busy. Come on. Let's do something. I'm going insane in this little room." He beckons him out of his seat, but Snape merely sits back and looks up at him with a discomposed mien.

"Not only do I not want to instruct them," he explains, his jaw tensing as he taps his finger anxiously against his paperwork, "but I also have an even worse predicament, as I have no idea how to waltz."

Jesus Christ.

Lupin laughs. "You didn't go to any of the dances in school, did you?" he recalls. "I remember you always being missing. Was it because Lily didn't want to go with you?"

Severus' eyes twitch, narrowing temporarily. "I... didn't ask," he replies, "but I'm sure she wanted to go with me as much as Sirius Black would have wanted to go with you."

Remus gives him a blank look. "That was a low joke."

"It... wasn't," Severus seethes, "a joke."

They stare tacitly at one another, Remus annoyed at the fact that Severus knows so well how to get under his gamesome skin, and Snape himself feeling satiate and very regardful of this.

"Well, then," Lupin replies, nodding curtly and making his way to the small radio in the corner of the room, "it looks like you'll need some teaching. Praestario waltz."

The radio fuzzes for a moment before fading into a vintage-sounding serenade. Severus tenses in his seat, wanting to disappear down into it as he puts together what's going on.

"No," he says quietly, panicking, his fingers gripping the edge of his own desk. Remus gives him a ludic look of skepticism, motioning for him to stand.

"How else would you learn?" he asks. "It's no big deal. Easy, really. Get on up."

"I don't even celebrate Christmas. I don't celebrate anything," he says urgently as he tries to slither out of this. "My parents were Jewish and therefore I am Jewish by blood but not by affiliation; I could not be any more autonomous from Christmas than I already am. Don't insist I connect myself to it."

"Exposure is healthy, don't you know?"

Snape's voice is weaker now. "I'm not dancing with you."

"Yes, you are," Lupin confutes, holding out his hand in offering as a tiny smile forces itself beneath his nose. "Better me than Minerva. If she hears that you don't know how to waltz, she'll force you into practicing with her for weeks."

Seeing the incertitude in Severus' eyes, Remus softens his expression and lowers his tone, letting the music wrap itself around the sleeves of his soft brown jumper. 

"I'm not James, Severus," he adds sincerely, conveying the message in the most heartfelt way he can. "I'm not here to hurt or humiliate you. You're safe with me. It's alright."

Their eyes meet, ebony crashing against the light gold until the silence ends and Severus slowly stands to his feet.

"Don't feel so unvanquished, Lupin," he remarks thickly at him, ignoring his outstretched hand and crossing his robed arms as he comes to a complete stop in front of him. "This is only so I can evade Minerva. It is in no regard your personal win."

But Lupin is uninfluenced by the words, his arm still offering itself to Snape's feeble grip, his fingers still unfurled to harbor his cold, abiotic palm.

"Take my hand," he instructs, "and place your other one on my shoulder."

Severus pauses, standing hesitantly in front of him, rousting around in his expression for any sort of malice he can find. His arms uncross themselves, and he stands stilly before him, poised, guarded like a doe being offered a berry from a life it doesn't know. But he softens as he sees no ill intent, the caverns of Remus' warm stare holding nothing other than fond benignity.

He gives in. His fingers slowly slip into Lupin's, immediately warmed by the skin as he places his other palm on his shoulder, feeling Remus' free hand come up and rest on the back of his ribcage. Severus doesn't know where to look, although he notices that Remus himself keeps his eyes epoxied completely onto him, homely and warm in the situation as he begins to step with his feet.

"Okay, watch my steps," Lupin instructs, and Snape looks down to see him moving in a sort of square. "You'll do the same thing, but you'll step back on the first beat while I step forward. Clear?"

"Decently," Snape bites back, his fingers tightening on the shoulder to which it so dearly clings. He doesn't want to give in to being amenable. Not when he feels so out-of-place.

"Okay, then," Remus replies. "Then we'll start. It's best to just jump right in. You'll get the hang of it quicker." He keeps rotating through the steps, and Snape watches them halfheartedly. "One, two, three. One, two, three—"

With such unexpected vehemence, Severus is then swung around the room, his muscles tensing to the hilt as he assays urgently to keep up. The pattern is peculiar, he decides, comforting himself with a acetous glare at the floor. It's a miracle that it's so widespread when it feels so unnatural to the legs.

"Just match me, but backwards," Remus coaxes, and Severus relaxes his brows with an abrupt look of disconnected irritation.

"Am I playing the part of the woman, Remus?" he asks bitterly, and Lupin doesn't falter as he continues to spin him around the room.

"We're two men, Severus," he replies bluntly. "One of us has to. You'll have to learn both parts regardless— You're on my foot."

"Perhaps your foot is in the way."

"Oh, are you the one that knows how to waltz? By all means, go ahead and lead."

Snape sets his jaw, giving Lupin a sharp look but finding only amusement reflected back. No anger or ire or accusations that mean anything. Dependability. Disenthrallment. He begins to relax in his grip.

"You know, there was a long amount of time where Shakespearean actors did that, actually," Lupin speaks lightly, looking down at the significantly-shorter Snape as he begins to get the hang of his footing. "They wouldn't let women onstage, so they played their parts themselves. Did you know that women with such interests were often sent to asylums?"

Severus is quiet, not minding the lightly morbid conversation as Remus continues. He feels safe and warm here, in this room, in this short moment of life, listening to facts that he only finds interesting because Remus finds them interesting, and this facet alone could make anything tantalizing to his frequently indifferent mind.

"If they had interest in politics," Remus continues, "or if they appeared overeducated or didn't want to get married, or if they read novels or engaged in... personal sexual affairs, they'd be imprisoned and dubbed clinically insane for the rest of their lives. And this was just last century, did you know?"

"Do you spend such an unwarranted sector of your time studying fatuous historical facts?" Snape says bitingly, though he finds it charming that this is of interest to the man. Remus, who seems to understand this, ignores the words entirely, slowing their steps and giving him a fair warning.

"I am going to spin you around now," he says in slight amusement. "Don't break anything."

If the question is to come up regarding whether he means not to break his furniture or not to break one of his own bones, the answer is likely both. Which is why Snape doesn't ask it. He knows.

Severus is forced to twirl away from him, stretching out and adjoining to him now by only his hand before spinning back into his grip and attempting to begin the steps again. This, somehow, is easier than the repeated foot placements themselves.

Lupin's hand, as Snape spun back to him, has alighted to his waist, barely caring to correct itself and go back up to his ribs at all. Severus finds himself overtly aware of their closeness, of the few inches between their chests, not at all thinking of the actual dancing itself.

He pauses, deciding to direct his thoughts to something, clearing his throat and looking down at the floor while they circle around the room.

"How are you feeling?" he asks. It feels strange, holding such mundane palaver in such an abnormal circumstance.

Lupin hesitates. "Sore."

This is only very, very slightly true.

"And yet," Snape replies, feeling as if he almost has a grasp on where his feet need to go, "you're forcing me in my hard-heeled boots to dance with the full knowledge that I'll only leave you sorer."

Remus smiles slightly, a shaggy strand of hair falling before his eyes. "Luckily my toes don't go through a lot of change, so they can bear some unwelcome steps at the present moment." 

"The soles are gridded," Severus counters dryly. "They undeniably hurt more."

"Nothing can do them more damage than being used as a blockade against the closing of your office door," Remus smirks, referencing one of their very first meetings. "Did I tell you I still have that tampon in the pocket of my other coat?"

Severus smirks for the slightest fleeting moment before going completely still and stoic again. He says nothing, spotlighting his weightage on his atrocious attempt at dancing while Remus hesitates, reading his face with a soft and inquiring expression before talking again.

"You asked me, so I must return it," he decides. "How are you doing on this day?"

"Adequately," Snape deadpans, his feet stopping momentarily as he loses track of them.

Remus laughs. "Can you ever just be happy?"

"That's no fun, Lupin, is it now?" Snape cavils at him, giving him an impetuous glare because he knows Remus is going to say yes.

A smirk.

Severus sets his jaw. "Don't say it."

"Yes."

He isn't sure what sort of feeling passes through him then, but Severus is oddly attuned to the fact that he is experiencing ersatz anger; irritation that completely swallows him but is not even near real. It is, contrarily, fun and endearing and lighthearted, and he finds himself holding back a laugh. Remus, who notices, seems to have the satisfaction of harnessing the exact reaction he's been hounding this entire time.

"Oh, Lupin, you are in for it," Severus seethes, the tiniest hint of a grin pulling at the leftmost corner of his lips. "I have never before been less hesitant to poison your Wolfsbane."

"Have you not?" Remus replies, spinning him around again. "I expected to fall dead last week at the latest, judging by the urgency behind you wanting me to take it."

"You were on thin ice, yet had not fallen through," Severus illustrates, his neck suddenly feeling hot beneath his tight turtleneck-styled collar.

"I've been trying to melt that ice of yours," Lupin replies, meaning something else, and Snape adds a comment that means something else as well.

"It's continually becoming thinner, which is unfortunate."

"Is it, now?" Remus asks. His face is stagnant and halcyon; Snape is intimidated by it. "I wasn't sure such a tremendous thing was even achievable."

Severus attempts to speak again, but he's abruptly frozen as there's a knock on the office door to his right. Suspended in his circuit, he shares an awkward nod with Remus as they separate from one another, Snape heading to the door while Lupin stuffs his hands into his own pockets.

The professor pulls the door open. The music still permeates the room as none other than Albus Dumbledore stands coolly just outside, a look of complete comprehension ennobling every scantling of his being. They don't have to tell him a thing in order for him to understand the circumstances that have been laid before him.

"Not right now, Albus," Lupin greets him lightly, motioning to his disheveled dancing partner, "he's busy."

The headmaster raises a brow. "Learning how to waltz, are we?"

"Barely," Severus snarls under his breath, and Lupin crosses his arms over his chest.

"Oh, come on, there's been progress," he disagrees. "Each minute you step less often on my foot."

"Barely!" Snape reiterates, more life behind it this time, and then diverts his focus to his employer alone. "What is it you need, Albus?"

The old wizard takes a breath, looking him up and down a few times before stating simply, "I came to ask if you'd given any more thought to my... request, specifically regarding your loyalty toward—"

Snape slams the door shut and turns back around.

"Have fun indeed," Albus says through the door.

"Shouldn't you be busy informing the entire staff about how I take my tea?" Snape mumbles bitterly to himself, although he can swear Albus can hear it anyway; there's an unpretentious chuckle that transudes in from the hallway before the old man turns and walks away.

It's an entire bombshell to Lupin that Snape is the one to initiate the reinstitution of the dancing. In fact, it happens with no prompting at all. The man in all his tenebrosity and angst and robes has slipped his way back into his arms as easily as the spring can finally melt the ice on winter rivers. Here Comes the Sun, Remus references to himself, and he's accurate enough.

They practice the dance for minutes on end, complete silence falling between them aside from the episodic remark of inconvenience, all of these, of course, from Remus.

"Ow," he remarks as he's unsuspectingly trodden upon. "Jesus."

"What was that about me stepping less frequently on your toes?" Severus asks with the most snide expression he can possibly muster while waltzing in the grip of a childhood rival.

Lupin shakes the impact from his leg as he steps. "That was my shin!"

"Ah, my mistake," Snape soothes with an utterly astrological fuckton of sarcasm. "I must have misstepped."

Remus stares.

"...How do you misstep... onto a shin?"

"In my such demure defense, Remus, I did not step onto it," Severus reasons quickly and with ease. "It just happened to be in the general area when my boot was passing by."

Lupin gives a jesting sort of look. "With all the graceful whirling round the building you do, I'd imagine you to have a knack for artistic movement," he says, and Severus cannot bring himself to think of a retort as he notices that the song has just recently ended and they are standing still, completely interlocked with no music to ease the magnetizing discomfort of being so close. They're both silent, Snape casually stepping backward but Lupin following close behind.

"Professor Snape," Remus breathes accusatorially, and Severus notices he's completely backed up against his own bookshelves, completely caught under Lupin's gentle grip, unbearably close to him as they stop moving around the room. "You are an atrocious dancer."

Snape flouts the quiet smirk that stows itself beneath Remus' soft nose, feeling his breath unexpectedly become shorter. He feels stuck there, even though he knows he isn't.

He swallows, his eyes looking down at Remus' buttoned sweater because they have nowhere else to go. "And what is the procedure for when the music stops?" he asks almost inaudibly in attempt to detract the nature of their closeness back to its typical distanced state.

But Remus only tips his head, silent and quizzical, searching Snape's expression as if it's some sort of enigma he has to expound. "Well, it depends," he replies huskily, his tone smoke on dark morning waters, his hands melting him like the warmth of Hell on Heaven's icy fronts, "on what your partner is..." He takes a meaningful breath. "...into."

And their eyes meet, clicking into place like glass bricks, the words coming together just as easily. Severus finds it facile to breathe again, although now it's his own head that begins to race in lieu. He finds himself glancing down at all of Lupin that he can see. The dark red sweater, the golden-cream shirtsleeves beneath, the stubble of two days' time, the lips, where he seems to falter for a little longer before he remembers to focus on his eyes again. The eyes, which are steady and gold and green and blue, boring into him with an expression Snape can't quite read. It isn't ruinous. It isn't malicious. It's just there, sweet, warm, understanding, as if these few single moments of examination have told Remus Lupin everything he will ever need to know.

Severus gathers himself again, pulling his fingers away from Lupin's chest as he notices they've peregrinated there. He expects his voice to sound unstable as it leaves him, but it doesn't. He delivers his response with far more puissance and aplomb than he could ever dream of harnessing himself.

"Fascinating," he remarks huskily, his voice itself like sand, and he pushes Remus away so he can whirl back to his desk and sit there with the nagging hope that his mannerisms aren't giving away the panic behind the word.

"I'd say," agrees Remus, just as disjointedly flustered. He sits in the chair opposite him and they both mold their gazes to the desk rather than one another. Neither of them move.

"Thank you for your help and company during the shift," Lupin says stiffly in attempt to break the sudden barrier between the two. "And for your extensive — and quite unexpected — hospitality. That was... kind."

Snape opens a book. "Mm."

"No, it was," Remus articulates, social energy coming steadily back to him again at the dry and dismissive response. "Don't you 'mm' me."

Severus sighs, looking up from the pages of the book he wasn't even reading. "You are welcome, Lupin, though it is not perspicuous to me why this must be evinced."

Remus stares coolly back, reserved as he studies each and every tendril of shoulder-length hair — deep, dark strands of the universe's very shadows — that shield so intentionally the hidden expressions of the one man he'd barely known until he stopped knowing everyone else. He watches the fingers, thin, almost jagged, fleeing along the dip between the pages of his open book like rain on the film of a fresh leaf. How the spine would quiver if only it knew.

"Sometimes I wonder what you'd become if you stopped repressing every natural reaction of yours," Lupin thinks aloud, his words distant, his eyes on the book. Severus regards the fragmentary theory with a rapt tip of his head, looking down at words he isn't even processing as he considers it.

"Some warped monster of a man, likely. Jekyll's Hyde."

"Hm. At least the false Hyde showed emotion," bargains Remus with the valiance of a merchant. Snape pauses.

"And so you wish I were a false?"

"No," Lupin replies, not noticing the hesitant stiffness of Snape's shoulders as he continues. "You are a false. You're guarded. Nothing leaves you. Sometimes I wish you were yourself without gates and spears and watchmen. The true Hyde."

The professor sets his jaw as he glowers downward. "Literature is no analogy for life."

He's met with a slightly-sour scoff. "The passage you read from Richard II may argue otherwise."

"What is this, Remus?" Snape replies with an abrupt infusion of venom, his face snapping up and his dark eyes alight with the ferity of millions of incandescent stars. "What is it you're trying so hopelessly to achieve?"

Remus, caught off-guard, can only stammer. "I just..."

"I assume you deem it funny to accuse my self-reserve of such hideous tenuity," Severus adds, his voice low now but the poison still reeling beneath it, "but I recommend you discontinue your assails on my necessary defenses. Shooting arrows into the skin will only make it thicker, and the more you want to know, the less I'll want to tell."

His lour drowns everything Lupin has ever dreamed of becoming. Remus, slack-jawed and rigid, can only attempt to finish his earlier sentence.

"I just..." he tries again, his head level but his eyes straying down to the side, "I just want to know you."

There's a bare, dark presence between them. Remus isn't sure what it is.

"Do you know my name?" Severus replies, standing up and walking casually to his shelves as Remus looks on in frustration. "My occupation? My age? Can you describe me? Do you know what I wear? What my office looks like? What I'm good at and at what I'm miserable?"

It's quiet, and Lupin nearly says yes, but then he knows he'll lose the argument and his point will be left unremembered.

"I think you know exactly who I am," Snape's voice inks over the bottles he rearranges so purposelessly. Lupin becomes tense in his seat, his tone weaved with opposing agitation.

"I think you know exactly what I meant, too, and it wasn't that."

Severus gives him a slick glance from where he perches by his shelves, forsaking his bottles and walking over to the window. He breathes at the glass, his half-closed eyes outstaring through the falling snow at whatever sits beyond it. "The world is an hourglass, Remus," he murmurs, nearly as if he's reciting it. "We know nothing. We fall, we turn, we rest. All we can do is exist inside it, let the white sand fall around us and prevent ourselves from hypothesizing it all. We go mad when we ask too many questions."

Remus, absorbing the words and considering the choleric reaction he received for his questions, decides not to pry, espousing a topic only related to the diversion in hopes of appeasing the brittle old cat that is Severus Snape. "How many hours do you think we've lived?"

Snape barely moves, looking so immediately placid; such a contrast to how he was just moments prior. "Speaking literatim?" he asks. "Or do you happen to mean it in terms of one rotation being a less literal, more metaphorical life?"

Lupin doesn't care. He isn't actually wondering. "Either."

"Too many," Snape decides. Another strand of hair falls over his cheek and he brushes it away.

"Do you dislike the idea of reincarnation," Lupin expands, "or the idea of the life we're living now being too long?"

There's a long moment of thought attached to the coda of this query. The cloak that runs off Snape's shoulders barely even quivers in the moving air around it as the man turns to stone, becoming just as frozen as the ice outside until he finally decides on his answer.

"I don't know," he says, the tone earnest and more echt than it's been all day. "I'm just fed up with being in the hourglass at all. I just... want to be the air."

He sweeps himself back to his shelves again, scrutinizing the placement of all the jars compulsively and leaving the confession to ensconce itself on the windowsill where he left it. Lupin watches, just as he always does.

"Someday, we will be the air," he assured him, "and what then?"

Snape sits back down in his chair. "Then... nothing," he replies with an exhale of abatement. "Peaceful to look forward to."

Remus nods quietly, his eyes following Snape's hand as it picks up an old and damaged fountain pen, his achromic fingers wrapping so deftly around the blue and red and gold. He thinks about what he said about the hourglass. He wonders how much of his sand is left, and how much is at the bottom. He wishes it were softer. But it isn't. This hourglass is painful and hirsute, and perhaps Severus is right: being the air is a lot more lovely.

"Yes," he agrees finally, because there's nothing else he can really say. "Peaceful indeed."

They sit and watch the snow, each large flake falling straight down past the window with no bitter wind to steer it. It looks like sand. But of course it does; winter's time is ticking, too. And how gracefully it accepts it. How peacefully it lets itself melt, not at all mithered by how much it has accomplished but rather how much lies ahead. Forget the sand. Forget the hourglass. Remus Lupin wants to become the snow.

Both of them know this is absurd. Neither of them, expressly Severus, can possibly deny that Lupin is simply too warm to be controlled by such passionless air. He's too sturdy. Too adaptable. He owns too many sweaters; makes too many scones. The only thing that can cage him is the flesh of his own hands. The only thing that can tie him down is his own knot.

Befriending the snow might be easier, as Remus makes a lot of friends. And they do have things in common, like being soft and pretty and gentle and light. And snowflakes are good friends with the air, and Severus wants to become the air, so perhaps they would all get along very well.

"Do you want to go outside?" Lupin suggests absentmindedly. Snape says nothing, but he grabs a scarf. Remus has learned that it's his actions that say all he'll ever need to know.


	15. 𝚇𝙸𝙸𝙸     >>    𝚃𝙷𝙴 𝙱𝚄𝚂𝙸𝙽𝙴𝚂𝚂 𝙾𝙵 𝚆𝙸𝙻𝙻𝙸𝙰𝙼 𝚂𝙷𝙰𝙺𝙴𝚂𝙿𝙴𝙰𝚁𝙴

< 1 MONTH, 3 WEEKS >

The snow cakes itself into the ridges of his boots, lining the heel with streaks of white so aseptic it may as well be gold.

He strides down a diffident street, relatively unpopulated, each house very large and very far apart, each plot of land lined with tall metal fences and plants higher than the shingles and femerells themselves. The morning is stationary and inorganic. The air has nothing to it; not even a name.

He stands outside the gate until it opens for him and he walks hesitantly up to the large front door. He disrelishes immensely the memories he gets from the stone exterior alone, and he hasn't even stepped inside yet.

The door in due course is opened, and he's acknowledged by an old school-time friend, dressed in contoured black robes and dark leather gloves, the hems lined with dangling chains that Severus can only guess are genuine silver. Looking at the man, he wishes this were one of his nightmares; a memory so easily brushed away with the opening of his own eyes. He wishes he could wake up from this and ignore it all and exist only in a separate time. But this is real, from the intricate textures of the man's long, white-blond hair to the mephitic reek of fine wine on his extortionate suit vest.

"Lucius," Snape greets him, stone-faced, as his old cult colleague stares back with just as little attached emotion.

"Severus," Malfoy replies, stepping aside and motioning with his walking stick to the colossal front room. "Please. Come inside."

Each step reverberates across the bare stone walls, the large undraped room feeling less ornate than Snape's own home in Spinner's End regardless of the incredible difference in monetary worth. It's so arid, so crepuscular, no personality or signs of life to it in the least. There is not a single memory gracing its walls or any implications of laughter echoing through the stone floor. It's just a large gray box, cold, dull, unhappy. He doesn't like being in it. Not at all. He's never liked boxes; whenever he finds himself in one it reminds him of when he would hide from his father in the cupboards.

"As you understand, Draco is about a year now," Malfoy explains, leading Snape out of the large room and into another, showing the way to a large staircase that is all too familiar to the feet. "I just wanted you to meet him."

Severus tightens his jaw, feeling all too much as if there are strings attached and having a rather decent hunch regarding the material they are woven from. "I see."

"Narcissa would have loved to see you," Lucius adds in attempt to strike up conversation, "but she was called last-minute to Knockturn Alley for some business. She wouldn't tell me quite what it was. She sends her love."

Snape nods. "Mm."

They reach a rather large bedroom at the end of one of the manor's multifarious hallways, Lucius' gloved hand reaching out to coolly push open the door, which is kept up so well that the hinges don't even creak. The room is dark and gray and empty aside from a small bassinet in the middle, which they approach in complete silence. The snow from Severus' boots is beginning to melt on the floor. He makes a sort of statement of it, liking the fact that he'll leave an inconvenient trail of mud and water around the undelightfully spotless house. He makes no move to wipe his feet. He just lets them drip onto the murderous stone as he leans over to seethe expressionlessly into the cot.

But his eyes soften as he leans over it, taking in the sight of the bantam boy nestled within. Draco Malfoy, sleeping soundly between satin and lambskin blankets, his white hair just starting to grow over his head, lances Snape's chest in a way he has rather not been forecasting. He quickly pretends it is not so, straightening back up again and remaining outwardly unaffected.

"A most adequate young child," he remarks. "Already taking the lineament of his father."

Lucius nods, wearing no smile as they both stare down at the sleeping little boy. "He'll be just as powerful, just as favored."

Severus wavers, turning to him with an absent look. "Favored."

"By The Dark Lord," Malfoy clarifies, taking a long breath and turning to Snape. "Another reason why I have called you in."

Ah, so this is it. This is the authentic scheme behind the invitation. Severus had a feeling Malfoy wouldn't be the type to want him to step into the manor only to see a child.

A stone drops itself in his empty stomach, but he hides its impact, giving Lucius a look of complete neutrality. "You do not mean to say he's come back."

"Not entirely," forges the reply. "Although there have been voices. Rumors from some of our most trusted allies that Voldemort has separated his soul; that each little piece of him is slowly gaining more and more strength. Apparently so, he plans to return on the year that both Draco and Harry Potter begin their attendance at your new little place of employment."

There is a silence, the avoirdupois pressing on each of Snape's ribs until he's sure he isn't actually breathing. He forces himself to remain composed, but offers no reply; no averment of thrill nor approval, but no denial of such.

"And this is why you have called me here," Severus guesses, although it is a statement and has no room whatsoever for countering reactions. It is true, and he knows this before it leaves his mouth.

"I wanted to make sure you were still on our side," Malfoy confirms. "After the death of your little... mudblood friend, I can only assume you've been questioning your loyalty. I want to be sure I can count on you. That he-" Lucius tips his head in the direction of his son. "-can count on you."

Severus forces himself to nod, knowing he looks a lifetime more assuasive than he feels. "Unequivocally."

"If he comes back," Malfoy adds, his voice lower, more hushed, "I want to be sure that my place will not be outed by you to the public, in the event that you have turned."

Snape temporizes slightly before unbuttoning his left shirtsleeve, rolling it up for the first time in many, many months to expose the esoteric marking on the veins of his forearm. His breath silently wavering, he speaks the only words he can force himself to.

"Turned," he restates. "What a vacuous assumption. I have done no such thing."

And then he forces his sleeve back down again, buttoning it up almost feverishly and hating that the snake still sits there upon it, hating that he's had to see it again after so long counterfeiting that it hasn't been there. How peaceful it's been without his skin showing. How freeing to not feel the skull on his artery.

But he knows he doesn't need to be terribly convincing. He knows that, deep down, Malfoy abominates the mark just as much. He can see it in his eyes, the oscillation in his step, the stiffness of his words. He knows the man wants to be out just as much, sharing with him this silent knowledge that escape is as close to Heaven as they'll ever be, but neither of them harnessing the confidence nor fearlessness to speak it aloud. Because there's always that inkling that he's unfounded in his estimate. There's always the hazard that the other will change their mind and pass the information on. A small secret, even as mundane as this, could lead to an unfortunate and quite mysterious death that neither are very inclined on receiving.

"If it turns out that the Dark Lord is, indeed, returned," Severus drawls, his fingers tightening against his palms in subconscious anxiety, "when is it that we will know?"

If he didn't know Lucius Malfoy well enough, Snape would have missed what came next: the most transient, delicate nictation of torment, fear, distress, all winding up into the white point where his eye reflects the light of the nearest window, all lasting only under a second.

"I am not aware of such information," the man settles. "I assume we'd be called to another meeting, just as usual."

"Yes," Severus agrees distantly.

He leaves the manor only minutes later. Distressingly aware of Malfoy's still gaze on his back, he leaves through the front door and out the parting metal gates, setting his jaw as the awareness hits him that regardless of if Voldemort is alive, he is still a nodus. There are still segments of him that will always be part of the world; sempiternal warfare to wage. No matter who lives, there is always someone maintaining the evils. 

Snape is not as free from this predicament as he had hoped.

In fact, all the things that are wrong with the world seem the most wrong at this very moment. Everything that was already extreme seems now even more heightened.

Only his work and his research can calm the raging sea beneath his layered veins. His book from Filius is the only thing keeping him secured to reality and objectiveness, and he submerges himself in it completely once he reaches the sympathetic firelight of his own office again.

The book speaks of casting silent spells through intention. Severus takes notes of all of it, scribbling the important bits down, although it seems he leaves so little out that he may as well have transcribed the whole chapter by hand.

His head hurts and his wrist cramps, so he closes his eyes and leans back in his chair with arrant fatigue. The light from outside has faded quickly away, the only illumination in the room coming from his fireplace and also Remus Lupin, who still has not left his office.

"Have you got any records?" Lupin asks randomly, and Snape takes a long moment before answering.

"What?"

"I mean, you have a record player," Remus adds, "and a radio. I suppose you're the type that wouldn't have those if not to use them."

"On the contrary, they're entirely decorative—" Severus begins, but Lupin has already found a vinyl in a closeby cupboard, lifting it conscientiously beneath the needle before dimming the sound. 

"Remus, I'm not..." Severus sighs, placing his face in his hands as he battles his own enervation. "I'm not allowed Muggle things in here."

Remus sits back down, grabbing a book at random from the shelf next to him and flipping it open. "Well, Abbey Road may certainly be worthy of breaking the rules," he remarks as Golden Slumbers fades in and out of the walls around them. "I'm sure we can both agree on that." He flips a page, and Severus almost opens his eyes.

"Are you... reading?"

"You recited Shakespeare to me when I felt like absolute death," Lupin replies simply, "so I may as well do the same."

"You really shou—"

"Shut up. Sonnet fifty-seven," Remus interrupts, and he begins another work of the long-passed dramatist without giving any further room for objection.

"Being your slave, what should I do but tend  
Upon the hours and times of your desire?  
I have no precious time at all to spend,  
Nor services to do, till you require."

He stops with a small laugh. "And you sure have required them."

"Only because you required me to require them," Severus groans from his desk.

Lupin smirks back. "Are you currently willing to debate this?"

Snape stays unmoving, his headache turning into a migraine, his wrist turning to flame.

"Just keep reading."

Remus' firelit gaze is hesitant to return to the page.

"Nor dare I chide the world-without-end hour  
Whilst I, my sovereign, watch the clock for you.  
Nor think the bitterness of absence sour  
When you have bid your servant once adieu;  
Nor dare I question with my jealous thought  
Where you may be, or your affairs suppose..."

A pause. A swallow. Remus offers a slightly fraught clearing of the throat.

"But like a sad slave, stay and think of nought,  
Save, where you are how happy you make those.  
So true a fool is love that in your will  
Though you do anything..." 

He pauses, glancing back up. 

"...he thinks no ill."

And the book is closed, shoved casually back onto the shelf in likely an entirely erroneous spot as Severus holds his head across the room.

"Do you think he was gay?" Remus asks, reflecting immediately on the poem in a fashion on which Severus is not keen. Thinking about this alone makes Snape's head begin to fuzz. His brain needs to stop everything. Perhaps he needs to sleep.

"Such things are entirely his confidential affair, Remus," he rasps out, meriting another quick response in return.

"But what if he didn't want them to be?"

There's a quiet so austere that they can hear the bricks.

"...What are you implying?" Severus prompts, even though he doesn't want to talk or hear or listen or breathe ever again for the rest of his miserable life.

"Well, he published it openly. He wouldn't have made the information available if he wanted nobody to know it," Lupin points out, crossing one leg over the other by the knee and staring into the lit kindling. "Freeing, don't you think? Hiding nothing? Letting another know of your business? Your preferences?"

Snape scoffs. "Inglorious."

The very floor beneath them becomes slightly heightened, the room just ten inches tighter. Lupin tips his head.

"Why?"

"It is a misstep to let anyone know anything about oneself," Severus replies, and it's almost scolding. "And how degrading to admit to feelings as vulnerable as adoration, regardless of the orientation belonging to your object of interest. How utterly dehumanizing to show that you are humanized."

Remus shrugs. "Yes. Well."

Standing to his feet, he approaches the inchmeal-ebbing fireplace and kneels before it, the orange light leaving a unerring border of shadow behind him.

"I think you're afraid of yourself," he says, "and I think you're afraid of the subject of Shakespeare because you are afraid of relating to it, and I think you're afraid of it because you know it is true."

Severus scowls through closed eyes. "Do you deem me homosexual, Lupin?" he spits. Remus looks quizzically at him before turning back to the flames and shaking his head.

"No," he decides. "But you're... something. And since you wish to tell me nothing, I still plan on figuring you out."

He throws another log into the flames. The fire grows warmer, as does the fabric around Snape's neck. It begins to sting, to itch, and he almost hears the scolding tone of Tobias Snape as he looks into the convivial eyes of Remus Lupin and sees greenery purer than nature, water cleaner than ether; poetry more bewitching than Shakespeare himself.

For a long time, he does not look away. He lets himself laze in it like a cat in sun. For a moment, he almost smiles back.

He closes his eyes instead.


	16. 𝚇𝙸𝚅 >> 𝙵𝙰𝙻𝙻𝙰𝙲𝙸𝙰'𝚂 𝙵𝙰𝙻𝙻𝙰𝙲𝙸𝙴𝚂

< 1 MONTH, 3 WEEKS, 3 DAYS >

Remus leaves early in the morning, rolling up the sleeves of his dress shirt and buttoning his vest over it with a casually enlivened tempo pulsing through his fingers. He grabs the coat he left behind as he heads to the door, and Severus barely looks up from his work.

"You're all remedied and mended then, I presume?" Snape presupposes impartially. Remus clutches a hat that Severus wasn't even aware he'd brought here with him and rests it on top of his head.

"There's an Order meeting tonight. I'm hosting again," Lupin explains. "Wouldn't it be dubious if I told them that I was now living in Professor Severus Snape's bedroom so they should just dally on over there?"

Snape discounts the sentence. "There's a meeting?" he asks, his tone sounding most emotionally discommoded. "It's Christmas Eve."

Amused and jocular light shines itself from each button on Remus' coat as he fastens them. "I thought you said you didn't celebrate."

Severus' nose twitches obscurely, perhaps out of displeasure; perhaps out of knowing that he has lost. "I don't."

Remus nods. "Well then."

Opening the door, he steps out into the hall and turns around, tipping the brim of his hat like a man in a film from the fifties and giving a timelessly comme il faut smile. "I'll see you tonight."

Snape repudiates. "I'm not coming."

But Lupin only gives him that same knowing look, backing farther into the hall and pulling the door shut behind him.

"Goodbye, Severus," he replies dismissively, and the shadow of his dress shoes on the lacuna beneath the door sturdily walks itself away.

Severus scoffs to himself, tossing one of his students' papers to the side and holding the bridge of his nose between his first two fingers. Why is it that they had to contrive a meeting today? Today of all days. It's Christmas, for the love—

His eyes snap open.

"Fuck. It's Christmas."

Bursting out of his room, stacks of papers cascading behind him as he hauls his grading materials with him on his way, he streaks for the Great Hall with the most vehemence he feels he's exploited in quite some time. His cloak torrenting behind him, he crosses the school with the fleetness of a raven, whirling into the inordinate dining room from which all the tables have been momentarily cleared.

"Professor Snape," Minerva greets him as he rushes in, setting up a large phonograph in the corner of the room and getting ready to leave. "Truly didn't think you would arrive. I've just finished with the Gryffindors. Slytherins have been sent this way, so be prepared very shortly."

Severus sighs, setting his work down on a low cabinet behind him and traversing the room. He almost attempts the waltzing steps again, but, as McGonagall is still present, he escheats to circulating it only in his head, trying to keep the bloody werewolf and his stupid little sentences out of it. One-two-three, one-two-three, over and over in his strident and silent head.

He stands stilly by the door as the students begin to file in and Minerva begins to take what appears to be attendance — which is surely irritating; Severus is fully capable of doing this himself — while each child begins to line up on either side of the wall. It is in this moment that Snape happens upon the enlightening realization that Minerva isn't actually going to leave the room, and he naturally assumes that this is due to her wanting to see him dance so that she can mock him sedulously for it and make sport of how much better he would have been if he had only let her be his instructor. She leans over the phonograph stand like a statue of an old Greek goddess, wearing a tight smile and parading a look in her eye that he knows well enough to be able to docket forthwith as humorous pride.

He buttons his sleeves tighter around his wrists. He feels naked in this such exposing situation, instructing a room of children on something with which he is barely familiar whilst a proficient looks on. It's like abrading a lamb off its own skin. He must tighten all the clothing he can, such including his robes, becoming taut as he pulls them over his crossed arms and stares all of them down.

"Lamentably, you are all to make assiduous preparations for this annual winter dance," he says, as if it is at all news to him, "and I am to prime you for it."

His stratagem is to begin one of his interminable monologues for the purpose of avoiding the task entirely, but Minerva has turned the music on before he can even begin, forcing him to grit his teeth and jump into the project without a second thought.

"Letto," he says, pointing to the student that once cut her hand on a jar with a random spurt of dire vibrancy, "come forward. Minerva, if you would teach another."

Bella Letto steps up to him, clearly a lot less uncomfortable than he is feeling, and Severus looks to see that McGonagall has already picked up a student from the fronting end of the room with such ease that he can barely fathom how she does it. The closeness, the touching, the rapport of it all are things he'd never even consider sustaining with a student. Yet here he is, and here he will be annually for years to come. Sickening.

"I know how to waltz," Bella apprises lightly. "You don't have to tell me how."

And then she begins, rotating them both across the space, overhauling Minerva with her appointed student as the room observes. It isn't half terrible once it's inaugurated, although students do have a way of ruining this all.

"It seems like you haven't danced with a girl before," Letto beholds casually, and Severus furrows his brow.

"What brings you to such an outrageous inference?" he asks, although this response does not sway Bella in the least.

She shoots him a look of perusal, making Snape nearly regret restoring her laceration. "Because," she replies as if it's the most obvious phenomenon in any historical natural setting, "I'm leading."

Severus almost curses aloud, but he remembers that he is enwreathed by schoolchildren, so he says nothing (notwithstanding that profanity is certainly implicit in his own facial expressions; there sits no doubt about this in the least). Letto — although being only a First Year — can see it plain as day, and lowers her voice.

"They won't notice," she adds reassuringly. "They're stupid. You know it."

Snape cannot suppress the smirk that greets her amusing remark. If he wants to keep his job, he cannot agree aloud, although he certainly doesn't berate the statement. Perhaps this whole ordeal isn't so like damnation after all.

Before long, he's passed Letto off into the arms of another student, pairing people up as they begin to learn the ropes and supervising with Minerva on the sidelines.

"I assume you're not going," she mentions quietly, "to the Order meeting?"

Severus closes his eyes in dread as he's reminded. "If I happen to make any appearances, they will be only physical," he replies, "although I'd imagine no distress would be delivered from anyone over the fact."

Minerva doesn't deny it. "You have been throwing quite a selection of drama into things indeed," she replies, watching the children as they waltz around the room.

"Best for both of us, perhaps, if I fail to make an appearance," Severus accords distantly, invoking to whatever is there that Minerva doesn't ask him to dance. But she doesn't; she's altruistic enough to circumvent crossing that line. "The mere abstraction sickens me, and taking into account that it's at all involved with Christmas may result in my own vomit."

"Sometimes vomiting is good for you," McGonagall banters subtly, fixing her eyes on the children and her left hand on the phonograph. Severus contravenes her and says nothing in return.

He doesn't want to go to the meeting. Winter holidays make his stomach quiver, and forcibly spending them with others makes his veins languish and his skin sting. It makes him remember Hanukkah with his father. It makes him remember how once he lit the menorah wrong and had a black bruise on his jaw for weeks. It makes him remember his mother yelling and his father downing a bottle of whiskey like it was water, and he remembers spending nearly all of it lurking in the same cupboard he always did, vowing that he would never celebrate anything ever again, no matter what it was or who it was with.

He doesn't like holidays. They're olid and they make his mouth recall the taste of blood.

But, on the flip side, Remus himself isn't as loathsome as the memories are. Perhaps he countervails it. Because Remus is unalike his father in every way. He's soft, nurturing, safe. He appreciates reputable music and enjoys the books that Tobias Snape would call foolish and stupid and queer. Remus is kind and funny and likes when Severus decides to make a joke. He's everything the entire world has ever necessitated, and perhaps he might make the holidays at least acquiescent. Perhaps he can make them okay.

So Snape goes to the meeting anyway.

He arrives early, hastening to the doorway as the cold projects itself over his pale skin. The door opens before he can even knock.

The satisfied smirk on the corner of Remus' mouth hits him like a thorn, and he forces himself to scowl back.

"I'm only here to be part of any decisions," he hisses, "not because you requested it."

"I never said that was what I was thinking," Remus replies as Severus walks inside.

"It wasn't necessary. It evinced itself quite well on your features without your verbal dissemination."

Lupin doesn't let the sentence touch him, closing the front door and making his way back to his kitchen. It's strange how prevailing this feels now, seeing the man again after only a few hours of being apart. Typically the sempiternal presence would incense Snape in some form. He assumes he would get sick of it or feel strange about its constancy, but it's turned so natural and comfortable that it feels as if nothing has been altered at all.

"Hungry?" Remus asks as Severus follows him to the refrigerator and watches him pull out a tray of assorted fruits. "You're qualified to steal some food before everyone else gets to it."

"I'm rather repulsed, on the contrary," Severus replies, and Remus nods in goodwill.

"Pick the music, then," he replies, pointing to the turntable in the sitting room. "Records are underneath in the door."

Severus whisks over to the sitting room, his cloak coursing after him as he kneels down and opens a cupboard beneath the turntable. It's now that he ascertains the actuality of just how many vinyls Remus happens to own, from music of all genres to music of all different time periods, covering artists he knows and artists he does not. He chooses an older album, one with a well-loved cover that he is unfamiliar with, taking it out and closing the door as he opens it. It's an album by Fats Waller, recorded in the nineteen-twenties and only consisting of a few songs per side. The needle of the record player hits it with a precipitous burst of decaying record static and a saloon-style jazz piano, and it fades into the corners of the room like butter.

"Fats Waller," Remus recognizes from the kitchen a room over, coming in with another one of his assortment trays that he seems to enjoy putting together so much. "My father loved that one. Still does. I should give it back to him while he's still..." He places the tray down on the coffee table before picking the most appropriate euphemism he can think of. "...sentient."

"It's irritatingly jovial," Snape remarks at the lyrics and major melodic chord progressions of a tune titled I Simply Adore You, although he hates to admit he factually has a fondness for how it sounds. Old music like this brings an arable and simple feeling with it, speaking of times where problems were easier to find solutions to and people were all happy and in love. Although he supposes this is only a vizard on the surface of things. Problems, he determines, may have been worse then than now, but the people were inviolable enough not to show it and to focus on the guiltless things instead — this, perhaps, being the consequential difference of it all.

"It is rather happy-go-lucky, isn't it?" Lupin concurs, pacing back and forth between the sofas and the kitchen to grab mugs and silverware. "Do you want me to hang up your robes, by the way? It's warm in here."

"It's warm in my office as well, Lupin, and yet I wear it there nearly all the time," Severus grumbles, although he lets Remus take it anyway and drape it up in the front closet next to his own suspended jacket, which Snape knows for certain smells like vanilla and oranges and cloves. The song ends and permutes to the next one, entitled My Very Good Friend, the Milkman, which would be easily detectable even if Snape wasn't looking at the song list on the cover (which he is).

"Fats Waller was born in 1904," Remus imparts casually, fixing two mugs of tea and handing one to Severus, who is still crouched by the stereo. It's the same kind of tea he — and everyone else, thanks to Albus — always makes for him, and it tastes like the very music they're listening to, classical and archaic, like oil paintings of biblical scenes with bronze frames and soft spotlights from the ceiling. "He died in forty-three of pneumonia. He shaped the entire Harlem music scene in New York and could play nearly every instrument under the sun. He was a bloody genius."

Severus stands back up, both of them staring at the record player as the needle genuflects tenderly up and down against the slight warps of the vinyl. He doesn't know what to say, and he lands on something more abysmal than silence.

"Thank you," he says, his voice low, "for the tea."

Remus takes a sip of his own, his gaze still fixed entirely on the record. "Oh, of course," he replies. "And merry Christmas, even though you detest the fact that that's something people say to one another annually on this day."

"Mm," Snape hums back disinterestedly as he glances around the room, coming up with another astounding observation. "You don't have a tree."

"Oh, I barely celebrate, either," Lupin replies. "I just like saying it — and seeing people — you know, for tradition's sake. Makes me remember times with my dad back when things were simpler." He's imperceptive to the knowledge that Severus is reminded of the same, although under hellishly differing context.

Severus sips his tea in wordlessness whilst Remus continues his little monologue. He gets so chatty when he's in a good mood. It's endearingly prepossessing; a conclusion Snape wouldn't have come to regarding anyone else in this given situation.

"Plus, I don't see a point is killing a plant for the purpose of a one-day-long holiday," Remus goes on, his arms crossed and his teacup poised between his middle finger and thumb as the music pursues. "They're far too precious. It's a life in those roots, you know. They understand a lot more than we give them credit for."

"You bear such sentiment in the face of so vacuous life," Severus notes, although it isn't quite denigrating. "The mere venture of plucking a root from its earth and suffocating it in a jar is not worth the sensitivities. It's unchallenging; humane."

"Yes, but they're alive," Lupin replies, his eyes lighting up as he explains this little passion of his. "I want to give them the best lives I can. I feel terrible when I neglect them. Like just after I came home from your office, I found that Harold had wilted, and I still feel guilty beyond logical measure."

Snape pauses. "Harold."

Remus points to a hanging plant in the corner of the room, the ends of its floppy leaves having metamorphosed to a pale, moribund brown. Snape's expression sets in comprehension.

"You name them."

"Of course," Lupin replies, and then he points to another one — a fern growing in a pot by the kitchen doorway — with a witty grin. "She's my favorite. I named her Spruce Springsteen."

Severus snorts involuntarily into his tea, and Remus shows to be rather enraptured by the amused response.

"I give her sunglasses sometimes," he adds, and Snape grins into his teacup.

"You should fashion her a little guitar," he suggests, and Lupin smiles as they both consider the sight of a potted fern with a diminutive electric instrument nestled within its soil. "Then the only difference between her and Springsteen would be the fact that she is incapable of meeting anyone across the river."

"Nor was she born to run," Lupin replies in spurious disillusionment, and Severus gives a glance of comedic approval before being abruptly interrupted by a knock on the front door.

It's Elphias Doge, who brings nothing with him but silence. They become materially less talkative once they watch him walk in, sitting on the sofa and looking through his notes as Snape noiselessly helps Lupin set up the food.

If it isn't salient without commentary, he considers Doge a curse upon the planet. Looking back, he isn't sure the man has contributed anything other than incessant minor inconvenience in his life.

The three sit around the coffee table once it's set and wait for the others to materialize, the only noise being Severus stretching his arm over to replay the Fats Waller record every time it reaches the end, he and Remus exchanging disagreeable glances as they both seethe at the continuance of Elphias and his vapid, unhelpful notepad.

Snape, however, has decided that he rather likes Waller's music despite its outdatedness, which is a conclusion only reached by this forced silent contemplation. However, it dawns on him that Doge himself isn't outwardly demanding silence at all, so he looks back at Remus and breaks the quietude.

"She also wouldn't be blinded by the light," he adds, still referring to the plant, and Remus offers a quiet giggle before they're both shushed by the man working out some sort of written theory in the corner. Severus realizes that, contrary to his own assumptions, Doge actually has been stipulating silence all along; he just portrayed it subconsciously at first. Wanker.

Severus nearly wants to make the sardonic remark that if Elphias wishes to put a stopper in their anti-saturnine communicativeness, he may as well go and lock himself in the bathroom where he can effectively shovel all his bullshit into the toilet bowl instead of clogging their throats with it. But he holds himself back, flicking the leaf of a nearby plant that he doesn't know the name of and listening to Fats Waller sing of mailmen and marriage and cottages for nearly the seventh time in a row because he likes it too much to put a new record in. With the newfound knowledge that Lupin gives his plants names, however, Snape finds himself wondering the label given to every plant in this room, and he points to the one he's been bothering in curiosity.

Remus, giving an uncomfortable glance at Doge, mouths "Victoria" in return before pointing at a rather tall and armless cactus and miming "Dick" at it.

Snaps nods. "Phallic indeed," he mouths back, but it gets lost in translation and Lupin ends up replying with a very loud "What?" that earns both of them a glare and another shush from the precocious visitor on the other side of the room. Severus stiffens his jaw in upheaval and glares back, folding his hands over his crossed knees and wishing he'd read enough of that book from Filius to know how to temporarily injure someone by only wishing it.

Remus gets up and walks to the kitchen, and Severus follows by default. He shuts the connecting door behind him as they both step inside, turning back and trying his response again.

"I meant to say," he says in a whisper, "that Dick is a charmingly fitting name for such a shaft-esque cactus."

"Why, thank you," Lupin replies. "He would love to hear the compliment. If only the other dick in the room let it be told." He pulls out a carton of strawberries and a bar of sweetened milk chocolate with such insouciance it may as well suggest he's said nothing at all, and Snape hides his amusement like Fats Waller hides love: less than minimally if at all.

"I thought such a term was only forced upon those believed to be in possession of one," he jabs. Remus gives a harsh exhale of breath, pulling a few baking pans and sheets of wax paper out of the cupboard beneath him.

"Good one," he says approvingly. "Melt that chocolate, will you?" He points to the bars of it sitting on the countertop. Severus lifts a brow, retrospecting a fact about him that he forgot he even knew.

"I thought you didn't like chocolate," he replies, although he puts it into the pot and melts it anyway. There's a knock from the front door, and Remus sighs at it.

"I'll let them in," he replies, turning to the kitchen doorway as he delineates: "Strawberries in chocolate are an exception. If you do not agree that such is a superior source of food then we must have a long and serious talk when I get back."

And he walks off to let in his disadvantageous guests, leaving Severus to tense his jaw in attempt to ensconce another smile from himself.

Of course he cannot deny the superiority of chocolate-dipped strawberries, so he does not make the vitiated attempt to try. He only focuses on assembling them, and by the time Remus Lupin has returned to the kitchen, he's already filled a tray and put them back into the refrigerator to settle in their sweet coating of delectation.

"How many people do we happen to be waiting for?" Severus asks as Lupin readies his coffee machine.

"Just Fallacia and Minerva," he replies. "Hagrid isn't coming. He said he had other things to do. Something about spiders; I don't know." His nimble fingers prepare the coffee grounds and hit a few buttons, resulting in the sound of boiling water and steam.

"Why must this meeting involve that disgusting hag?" Snape smolders at the verbal guest list as he intricately dips each strawberry into the melted chocolate. The irony of his anger is all too apparent, his distaste and vexation completely combatted by the gentleness put into making the delicate food.

"Which one?" Remus asks, and Severus almost says aloud that Minerva is one he does not find unpleasant anymore.

"Either," he replies instead, but clarifies anyway. "Peritus."

Remus stands next to him now, reaching over to help dip the fruit. He glances over slyly, a fun, humorous expression permeating his features like calescent golden wax over the surface of a blood-red envelope.

"I'm sure she would say the same about you, if prompted," he replies. "She can be such a sweet old woman until you hit the right switch and she settles on annihilation instead. Remind you of anyone?"

Snape pauses. "Are you calling me a sweet old woman, Remus?"

Lupin is about to reply when there's another knock at the door, and he gives a frustrated look as his hand, mid-dip and gripping a strawberry, is put on hold. Courtly, Severus adduces that he may as well accomplish his task.

"I'll get the door," he growls from the back of his throat as he makes his way to it, and Remus nods before clutching his arm and halting him inflexibly in his spot.

"Okay, but one thing," he says, his voice getting softer, lower, as if to be secretive about a very mundane request. "This meeting is important. So don't... say anything this time."

Severus doesn't have the time to refute this. The knock comes again — quicker, angrier — so he rushes through the living room and to the front entrance, passing all the guests that clearly had been unaware of his presence before just now.

"Ah, Severus!" Albus calls from his position on the sofa, huddled around the table next to Pionia Egressus, Elphias Doge and two others Severus has not yet seen nor met. "I was unaware that you had arrived."

"I did," Snape mutters as he brushes past, reaching for the door and finally taking his Remus-advised vow of somewhat-eternal silence. From this point on, he will refractorily agree to say nothing out of mercy towards the meeting itself.

He pulls the door open, giving a polite nod as Minerva enters but stopping as he's met by Fallacia Peritus, who stands still before him with a glare of thoroughgoing portent.

"I thought you wouldn't be here, love," she hisses, and Severus bites back a stab about how, due to her age, she will technically be the one whose absence is noticed first between the two. To keep Christmas from falling apart, silence truly is the least he can accomplish.

Peritus aggressively storms past him as he closes the door, following her into the living room and giving her the most misanthropic and emotionless expression he can muster because, although hatred is one thing, indifference is always more effective. It makes people fear what you think. They cannot tell how you feel. It induces an anxious antiphon, a burning cube of ice in the caverns of their arid lungs, and it hurts them far more. The flames are psychological. They will automatically assume their own worst fear, and it is perfect.

Another decent argument is that the display of hatred extemporaneously drops you into the place of the underling. Because to feel hatred you have to feel something about the person. Feeling nothing is when you hold far more ascendancy than attainable by one who is angry. In this regard, anger is kinder, and this kindness is one he will strip from her like skin from a living lamb.

He breezes back to the kitchen, wherein Remus is standing in silence, looking out the window and staring at the snow. He's soft as he approaches. He makes an effort to be. He isn't sure why.

"Everyone is accounted for," he informs him gently, standing next to him and looking out in the same direction. They're both quiet, Snape's arms crossed over his chest, his robes draped out around him as fluidly as stone. Lupin clutches a hot mug of coffee, and he drinks it feverishly, tensing his jaw as he looks outside and not even noticing the taste at all.

"One year ago today," he speaks lowly, visibly tense as if in fear, "was the last Christmas I ever spent with them."

Severus almost asks who, but it dawns on him what is meant by the words, and he thinks of Lily for the first time in quite the many days.

"We didn't even exchange gifts. We all just sat in that room around the fire — except for James and Lily, who were at home with Harry — and we spent the night together as if it were any normal day," Lupin continues, giving a humorless laugh and scalding his tongue yet again with more from his mug. "If we would have known it was our last..."

Severus, listening intently, tries to remember his last days with those he has lost. All he can come up with is that the last day he played in the grasses with Lily Evans was in the summer of nineteen-seventy-four. And this fact has not ruined the rest of his summers any more than usual solely because she wasn't present, so he fails to see why such a fact would scar Lupin's following Christmases. But he also knows that Remus feels things in a different way than he does; sees the world in a more emotional distortion of a lens. So he berates none of it, offering condolences in the form of silence, as his lack of speaking has been somewhat desirable ever since the appearance in this cottage of Elphias Doge and his enticingly flammable notepad.

"Severus," Remus says again, his eyes less mournful and intense now than they were a few moments ago, even his muscles visibly relaxing as he turns from the window to face him. "In these events even the sun itself looks dark. I'm sure you've noticed it. You notice much."

Snape says nothing.

"You have shown me comfort and distraction from all the darkness; all the muddled things, and you make me remember warmth and light and the thick feeling of fire. I want you to know that, throughout this all, you have become a very good friend."

His golden eyes are earnest and pure as Snape meets them with his own. Severus doesn't have any idea what to say or how to welcome this vast presentment, but he feels a sort of cordiality fare through the finely-woven fabric of his cloak, caressing the tips of his fingers and spreading to his face, his cheeks, the ends of his ears.

He nods, unsure of all this. But he knows this is a mutual feeling, because he knows he perceives it in the same light. It's just strange to even consider admitting this back to him, although he decides it is in Lupin's best interest, and his best interest is somehow (and very annoyingly) Snape's best interest as well.

"You are..." Severus forces out, unable to make eye contact as he says this, "...more than tolerable as well."

When he looks back up, Remus is smiling enchantedly at the statement. How endearing that, if stated by anyone else, such a string of words could be easily taken as disheartening, but from Severus Snape, it nearly means the world.

The coffee machine beeps, the full decanter dripping on the outside with the liquid that Remus splashed into his mug mid-brew nearly ten minutes prior. Lupin, setting his cup down and moving toward it, picks it up, takes a breath to gather himself, and drags himself in the direction of the living room.

This time, however, it is Severus' hand that reaches out and grabs him by the soft mustard-hued wool of his jumper, making him stop and turn around to look at him in a frenzied sort of manner.

"Remus," Snape asks, the words themselves tying knots in his tongue even as he imagines them leaving it, "are you... of a manageable state?"

It is known to them both that a simple "Are you alright?" would suffice just fine, but the question seems to comfort Lupin immediately even so. Perhaps it is like a hug to know that one of the most acidic men one could possibly meet has the decorum to care about one's own well-being. Perhaps the simple thought displayed in the sentence is a warmth that not even scalding coffee can outdo.

"I'll be alright. I'm okay," Remus decides, although pain still warps itself around his irises like braids. "Are you?"

"I'm fine," Severus returns, and his fingers let go of the sweater, which feels like cotton and April and affection. He almost wants to hold it longer. Merlin knows Remus would let him.

They return to the living room, putting on masks of painlessness as Snape flops himself down into a chair and crosses one leg over the other while Lupin provides everyone with soup and coffee and cake and more of those wretched scones. The chatter between them all shifts now from casual small-talk to an almost aimless ebb of sound, everyone looking around the coffee table at one another in search of direction.

So McGonagall speaks, giving a tight and warm smile to those gathered around her and raising her coffee mug like one would a glass of wine at a wedding. "Merry Christmas!" she proclaims, and it's echoed back by everyone except for Severus, who has decided to reinstate his perpetual silence.

"It is gracious of you all to be willing to meet on a holiday, and for coming I thank each and every one of you here. May we all have an enjoyable Christmas Eve, even though we will be spending it in conversation about some very serious things." Minerva sets her mug on the table, and Elphias hands her his notepad, which she skims over before giving a subtle eyeroll and handing it casually back, the movement of her knuckles riddled with disapproval. "It seems Doge wishes for us to discuss some very specific topics, but I suggest that we focus on the big question at hand first and get to those later on."

The room erupts in quiet agreement, and Lupin finally sits down across from Severus, who watches him as he dispassionately zones out, light leaving his eyes as he glances every few moments at the lit and burning fireplace.

"To focus on the most direct matter," Minerva continues, "it is uncertain that He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named—"

"Voldemort," Severus corrects under his breath, but does not say it for Lupin's sake.

"—is really, truly, completely gone." McGonagall takes a plate as she proceeds, her fingers fastening themselves around a scone, and good riddance to it. "So it must be decided what we are to do if we ever hear the news that he has returned."

Remus' face rests in his hands, although he lifts his head up to speak. "12 Grimmauld Place," he offers, and only a few people present know what he means by this. "The Black family's hidden home. Abandoned, unused. We could meet there on the morning after we hear the news, before the sun rises."

"Why the morning?" Egressus challenges. "Why not at night like normal?"

"Because he'll expect it," Remus replies. "We do not want to seem usual or organized in any way. We should plan each and every meeting during the previous one. Space them out in varying increments; random, unpredictable."

"It is a greater question whether or not he would be monitoring the meetings at all, however," Albus adds, although he backtracks immediately upon some deeper contemplation. "But due to uncertainty it is true that unpredictability is our safest bet against someone who could intrude into our plans with a simple thought."

"So Grimmauld it is, then," Doge decides as he scribbles it into his notes. "Shall we get to my list?"

Minerva, with a resigned sigh, takes the notepad back and looks through it, asking each question one at a time and coming up with solutions as expeditiously as possible to merely get through to her own personal misgivings. But she stops on the last bulletpoint, considering it with a tip of her head and a look of legitimate interest, setting the notes down on the arm of the sofa and looking to the others.

"'What to do about the boy,'" she recites, and a stillness falls over them all as thick and encompassing as Lupin's deep green tablecloth.

"The boy?" Peritus asks, her fat old nose hiding inside her coffee mug. "What boy?"

"The Chosen One," Doge replies. "Harry Potter."

"It is certain," Albus adds, "that the return of Tom Riddle would involve him entirely. But there must be a level of sheltering for him. We mustn't throw him into every piece of information if he is not prepared for it. So what do we do with him, what do we throw him into, and what must we keep away?"

McGonagall adds on, her circular glasses perched over her nose strangely not unlike a dove. "And when do we tell him about the Order? Do we let him in?"

"Well, we must let him in if he's integral to the army's defeat," Remus says, but Pionia seems almost offended by the question.

"He'll just be a boy," she spits. "He should not know what isn't necessary. He mustn't know about us if he shouldn't."

"You say this as if you are sure of his temperament," Lupin shoots back. "How much he is able to handle will be shown in time, and we can then plan accordingly. This question is too based on prediction to answer tonight and I suggest we move on."

"So you don't care about him."

"Of course I care about him. He's the son of my best friend, who just so happens to be dead!"

"Then look out for him!"

Severus is becalmed as he takes in all their altercating over ineffectual topics, glancing about the room with his eyes marbled over as if he isn't hearing them at all. But he is, in fact, and he takes it all in as much as he is able.

There are things Snape believes should be discussed which have far more worth tagged to them; topics that they likely won't get to at the rate which they're sailing. For example, the ambivalence around whether Voldemort is even alive at all may be pragmatic to discuss, especially with what he just recently heard from Malfoy. But he doesn't want to interrupt, perhaps out of malevolence or perhaps for purposes of entertainment, so he keeps quiet about the whole thing.

Occasionally he'll meet Remus' gaze from across the table, share a silent scoff, and turn back to the speaker again. Other times their expressions are blank, their eyes lingering where they land, the dim lamplight reflecting between them like moonlit waters as the people around them quarrel like pigeons over seeds.

"Aren't you going to eat?" Remus asks him quietly, subdued just enough to not hinder the conversation but loud enough for him to hear.

Severus shakes his head. Remus raises a brow, motioning to the table.

"But it's Christmas."

Snape is externally unmoved. Internally, he wants to say, "I'm painfully aware," or, "Fuck Christmas," or, "Not with those scones, it isn't," or, "I'd rather die a sinner," but speaks not a word of it, abjuring the offer more sociably by being silent alone. His promise of saying nothing he finds to have turned out rather copacetic. He hasn't been yelled at or given attention because anyone who has ever dared ask his thoughts has learned that they no longer wish to hear them, and he can emotionally check out in all entirety from the event that he hasn't ever wanted to attend in the first place.

But he's flung back into the meeting when he hears the name Slughorn leave Fallacia's putrescent old lips, and his head snaps to her as he tries to put together what she's talking about.

"...would have loved this meeting, Lupin. What a lovely Christmas you have put together."

Remus nods. "Thank you, Peritus. You're so... selectively polite." He gives Severus a fleeting glance, although it isn't long enough for him to figure out what it means.

"Oh, don't mention it, dear," Peritus continues. "It is truly a shame Horace couldn't be here. I believe he's far away from this city. I will miss him greatly. He was my closest friend."

Remus pauses. "Are you saying he isn't coming back?"

Fallacia hesitates tempestuously, diverting her eyes to her cup again. "Oh, who can be sure? I didn't even hear from him when he left."

Severus gets a sudden appetition for entrenching on the conversation, a question biting at his very lips before he can even contemplate holding it back. But Lupin notices this, guessing it immediately and giving him a warning glance.

"I'm very sorry. That's unfortunate," he says, translating Snape's thoughts perfectly into a kinder, more demure version, "considering he must have told you quite a bit. Close friends tend to know everything about one another..." He glances back at Severus again. "Even down to the books on their shelves!"

Peritus forces a smile and sips her coffee like she has one minute to live, although Severus really wouldn't mind this. He finds himself giving Remus a rather sinister smirk, appreciative of his abilities to obtain the erudition he needs without ruining the party over it and without winning him death threats from a senile bag of rotting flesh.

"Yes, well, I'm sure there were things I never knew," Peritus replies. "Although I'm not surprised. If I were running away to New York, I wouldn't tell many people, either."

Severus sits up intensely, fitting her with an aghast glare.

"New York," he repeats in sync with Remus, and neither really mind that he's talking again.

Fallacia freezes as Remus tries his best to take a sweet from the table in a way that is as banefully inauspicious as possible. Severus speaks again, his voice like mist over dark swamps, his foot tapping swiftly against the floor.

"He didn't tell you he was leaving, but told you where he was leaving to," he paraphrases silkily, ignoring the fiery glare Peritus returns to him. "How fascinating, how unheralded, that you happen to be the only one around with even the most amorphous idea regarding his position on our accursed planet, regardless of the fact that you claim you are entirely oblivious."

"I believe you are speaking out of turn, Snape," Peritus hisses at him, and he only reflects her motions.

"By all means, speak and tell us more, then."

It isn't oftentimes that one can avouch that they've been brutally maimed by a woman who has been alive longer than the Roundhay Garden Scene, but before Severus realizes he's been pulled out of his chair and thrown onto the floor, he understands that this is a fun fact he can now add to the list of adventures he's faced since his pestiferous birth. The rest of the Order, who have been speaking amongst themselves and oblivious to the tension until just now, stare in complete shock as Fallacia Peritus finds a long wooden spoon and starts smacking him on the leg with it, which isn't entirely effective as it leaves him less than pained and looking up at her in a strange bout of mental dislocation.

It's all quite pliant until she throws the spoon, however, and the pointed handle grazes his eyebrow, tearing the skin vertically across it despite its sanded edge. Like a stupendous ancient varmint, she hollers down at him dictatorially in a manner of power that only people in senescent conditions are ever determined enough to achieve.

"Don't intrude on my life like that ever again," she warns, her eyes bright and apoplectic with defensive rage, her rose-painted fingernails digging into her own palms and cutting small crescents into the ridged skin. "Know your place, boy, or I'll show it to you worse next time around."

Severus sees a droplet of blood set itself on his top lashes, the red crowding his vision as he stares back up in numb shock that quite rapidly turns to conniption. He sees Tobias Snape in her soul. He can almost smell the ashes of his pipe on her superannuated clothing. Jumping to his feet and baring his teeth as he rushes to stand before her, the blood from his eyebrow dripping down his cheek like molten stone, he forces words on her miserable and now quite terrified face that he would not dare utter to the man she reminds him of.

"I am not swayed by the promise of blood," he whispers. "Every nerve of my very skin has adapted to its sting, so you will never find leverage in such actions no matter how desperately you seek it. But never again will you refer to me as 'boy' if you wish to keep your thin little curls on your thick little skull. I suggest you return to your home and take out your demeaning urges on your own walls. I may even provide you with a spoon."

And with this, the still-frozen room is greeted by Fallacia's face glowing a bright ember red, and her eyes then overflowing with an abrupt downpour of sobs.

"You are an evil man, Snape," she accuses in attempt to turn the room against him, and Remus gives a rather exaggerated sigh and stands up to grab her scarf from the front coat hook and bring it back to her. A resigned look sits about him as he gives her a tight-lipped smile, suggesting that he's finally seen it all.

"Alright, then," he says. "Thank you all for coming. I suppose Christmas is canceled."

He breezily ushers Peritus towards the door, McGonagall standing up in mystification to assist in some sort of way. Doge merely closes his notepad and stands up to leave.

Egressus gives Severus a sharp look. "What the hell did you do?"

"I merely asked her about Horace going to New York," he replies, just as stunned as the rest of them, his forehead beginning to sting. Albus gives him an overwrought look, and he ignores it.

The front door is closed, and it's apparent that over half of the guests have already left, most uttering things under their breath about Severus happening to ruin two meetings in a row and lamenting about why he has to be present at all and why he can't just be banned from the group until his eventual demise. He barely disagrees, and rather expects more of it as Remus walks back to him and points to the kitchen.

"A word," he says, and Severus hesitantly abides, pacing into the next room as the rest of the guests begin to head out. Lupin shoves plates of muffins and scones into their hands, sprouting apology after apology on a ceaselessly droning loop. It reminds Snape of the constantly-replayed Fats Waller record, which at this point has faded to its last silence. It now leaves only the noise of static as Albus finally exits the home after all the others, wishing Remus a merry Christmas and being the first one who appears to actually mean it.

When Lupin walks back in his direction, Severus feels himself nearly flinch. He doesn't know what he even expects, but his worriment is only heightened and put on hold when Remus stays for a moment in the living room and turns off the record player, staring down at it as the vinyl slowly stops orbiting and the needle lifts itself up again. He drops the record back into its sleeve and takes a long breath, forgathering the plates and cups from the coffee table and bringing them right past Severus, placing them in the sink and barely regarding him at all.

Silently, Remus wets a rag, which Snape assumes is for cleaning the table, but he is proven wrong as the fabric is wrung out and Lupin walks over, his movements temperate and calculated. Reaching out, he wads the cloth together and slowly begins to wipe the blood off Severus' face, even though he flinches at first.

"Are you alright?" he asks, which is the last thing the professor expects to hear. He does not answer because he does not know.

"Are you... angry with me?" he counters, as if he didn't hear the question at all.

Remus presses the rag to his cut, giving a short shake of his head and bending down slightly to get a better look at it.

"No," he replies. "The woman attacked you; it's barely your fault. And even if it was, I'd find you rather easy to forgive. Is that really what you're worried about?"

Snape, avoiding the question again, withdraws as the rag hits a sensitive spot on his cut. Lupin smiles apologetically.

"Hold this to your head," he instructs. "It'll be a bit; foreheads tend to bleed quite a lot. I know the process well." He points to his own darkened scars, which somehow gives the situation some amount of tangible comfort.

Severus does as he's told, the frore fabric calming him as he places it across his wound, spontaneously beholden to it not having been his eye that was hit by the end of that pointed spoon.

Remus gives him a band to help keep his hair out of the way, and he accepts it nearly graciously, binding it low on the back of his neck as Lupin washes all his gold and wooden utensils in the sink, the only sound between them being the unvaried drumming of the faucet water and the occasional ping of the spoons settling against one another beneath it.

Severus rules that he must typecast what he feels in order to further understand it, and he decides that the correct insignia is untethered. So much happened at once, and he was reminded so clearly of his father, and the way his cut throbs feels all too familiar, and it all weaves together into this mass of reality that is so impetuous and extrinsic that it doesn't feel like reality at all. Remus can see it, too, sending him a concerned glance every few minutes as he starts washing his knives and wooden bowls. He's become so used to studying his face and his eyes that he can spot so quickly when something is wrong beneath them. He can see the clear sugarcoat glaze as intensely as everyone else misses it.

It becomes very apparent with this thought that Remus Lupin is safe.

He's safe because of his kitchen, first off. It's solidly upstanding and old, made of natural wood and earth tones. It's grounded, quiet, subdued. He's safe because of the old photos he's pinned with a magnet to the side of his refrigerator, which Severus sits on a chair next to and studies. There's one of a very young Remus — a Remus without scars, so very long ago — next to his parents on an exhausted rug in what appears to be this very room. It's dated nineteen-sixty-six, and his parents look happy and like they love each other and they love Remus very much. Any person raised this way, in this kitchen, cannot possibly hurt him. Any person that wears the sweaters in Lupin's repertoire cannot kill a fly unless on accident, and Snape feels lucky to be in this room, surrounded by the care and comfort and structure it's made of, and the brownish yellows of Lupin's jumper. This sensation is one he never had as a child. The knowledge of safety. The presence of love.

It's almost with a jolt that Remus looks over for the near billionth time and notices a redoubtable alteration to Snape's features. Although subtle, he can't miss it. Silently, stilly, looking down at the floor, Severus Snape is crying.

And perhaps it's because he hasn't felt anything in a long time, everything having been building up and up with no end in too insignificant of a space, and perhaps it started leaking out with his blood as he is now subsequently forced to face it. But it barely matters why, because it's happening and that's really all there is to it.

Lupin abandons his bowl where it sits in the sink, turning the water off and drying his hands. He walks over as one would verge upon a wounded animal, quailing as he removes Snape's hands from his face. Taking the saturated rag and folding it over, he sets it on the countertop next to them and holds his arms out in expiation. He's aware that Severus rarely likes being touched in any way, but he cannot let himself see him in these conditions and do nothing.

It's almost like a child the way Snape tumbles into his arms, hugging him back and slowly slipping off the chair, both of them sedentary on the floor and holding one another as tightly as they can.

"Hey, it's alright," Remus whispers into his tied-back hair, closing his eyes as Severus sobs into the collar of his shirt. "Nobody can hurt you anymore. It's all okay. You're okay. You're safe."

Severus deliquesces into him, even his robes turning to water as they rest around them on the anachronous chessboard-tile flooring, reminded of that nostalgic feeling he used to get when he would see his mother fighting his father away. It's like Remus is the kindest, safest, strongest person in the entire world, and not even this can falter him.

But Lupin, however, would not say this is most accurate at all. In fact, as he feels this sudden warmth of embracing a friend again, he can't help but close his eyes and will his own sorrows away as well. Because, though the only memories he must deal with this year are ones of friends, this brings up the point that it's been months since he's been treated as a legitimate companion by those around him.

And, even more truthfully, he hasn't hugged anyone else in a really long time.


End file.
